Earth

by Ben Bova

  “But it’s a very big ocean,” Sheshardi repeated.

  ENTRY

  Entry into the ocean was indeed rough. Tray watched the main viewscreen as the water seemed to rush up to meet them. What had appeared peacefully calm at a distance was in fact rippled with surging waves that marched unimpeded across Jupiter’s planet-spanning ocean.

  There’s no land in this ocean, Tray knew. No continents, not even islands. Those waves surge across tens of thousand of kilometers, unconstrained, endlessly circling around the planet’s girth.

  And the ocean is deep, he told himself. Tens of thousands of kilometers deep.

  “Impact in fifteen seconds,” Sheshardi’s voice called out, high with excitement.

  Clear plastic covers slid out of the bulkhead behind the passengers’ seats and fastened themselves to the deck, encasing each seated person in a protective cocoon. For the flash of an instant Tray felt trapped, confined.

  But then—

  “Impact!” Sheshardi called out, and the vessel plunged into the frothing sea.

  Despite the protective straps Tray felt slammed in his seat. His vision blurred momentarily, then steadied. Turning his head, he saw Loris blinking rapidly.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Through the plastic covers enveloping them both he saw her nod once, twice, and then smile tentatively. “I think so,” came her slightly muffled reply.

  Sheshardi’s voice came through. “We have successfully entered the ocean. All systems are operating normally.”

  The plastic covers slid up and disappeared into the bulkhead once more.

  “That was … jolting,” said Kell, shaking his head as if he’d just been struck by a heavy punch.

  “Any injuries?” Sheshardi called. Tray found it almost humorous that they couldn’t see the Australian, hidden behind the command chair’s back.

  One by one, the four passengers responded that they were unharmed. In the few seconds it took them to reply, the vessel’s motion seemed to smooth out. The violence of their entry into the Jovian ocean was behind them now.

  “Very good,” said Sheshardi, still hidden in his command chair. “Now we go hunting for a herd of Leviathans.”

  SEEKING

  A line from an ancient poem echoed in Tray’s mind:

  “Alone, alone, all, all alone;

  “Alone on a wide, wide sea.”

  The globe-girdling Jovian ocean seemed empty, lifeless, as Athena plunged deeper, ever deeper into its immense depth.

  The central part of the control panel was hidden from view by the back of Sheshardi’s sculpted chair, but Tray could see the peripheral screens. They showed nothing but empty surging ocean.

  “Where are the Leviathans?” Bricknell asked impatiently.

  With a tight grin, Kell answered, “We’ll find them, don’t worry.”

  Loris said, “I hope we find them before we have to leave the ocean.”

  Sheshardi’s voice came from the command chair. “We are tracking the nearest herd of them. They are several hundred kilometers away.”

  “Several hundred kilometers?” Tray heard himself ask.

  “Heading in our direction,” Sheshardi added. “We should make rendezvous with them in…” His voice trailed off momentarily, then he resumed, “Four hours and eleven minutes, if they remain on the course they are now following.”

  Silence. Tray realized it would eat up a sizable portion of their time in the ocean merely to find the Leviathans. And what if they don’t want us goggling at them? he asked himself. What if we spend the time to reach them and they just speed off and leave us in the middle of nowhere?

  Kell’s voice, calm and steady, said, “This is like a fishing expedition I once was on, off Madagascar. We were searching for coelacanths, those primitive fish that had survived from millions of years earlier.”

  “Did you find them?” Loris asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Kell confessed. “But we had some fine meals aboard that research vessel.”

  Tray thought the story didn’t cheer anyone.

  Then Para volunteered, “Research can be frustrating. Searching for something elusive requires patience.”

  And a good food supply, Tray added silently.

  * * *

  Athena sank steadily deeper as Tray and the others sank into silence.

  Then Sheshardi called out, “Sonar contact! We have sonar contact with the Leviathan herd.”

  The screen directly above his seat back showed a vague set of blips, nothing distinct. Still, Tray could feel the surge of expectation that filled them all.

  Gradually the blips resolved into definite shapes. The Leviathans superficially resembled earthly whales: long streamlined bodies with powerful tail flukes moving rhythmically up and down, smaller fins on their backs and flanks.

  But as they got steadily closer Tray saw that the comparison to whales was only superficial. These beasts were enormous. The readout figures running across the bottom of the viewscreens measured their lengths in kilometers.

  The passengers remained in awed silence as they approached the migrating herd. Tray felt his mouth hang open as he realized their immensity.

  Ten, twelve kilometers in length, the Leviathans moved through the water with easy grace.

  “They are ingesting animal prey,” Sheshardi explained as they got nearer. “Almost microscopic animals.”

  “Like baleen whales on Earth live on krill,” Bricknell murmured.

  “Much the same,” Kell agreed.

  “Look!” Loris called out. “They’re flashing lights!”

  “That’s how they communicate,” said Sheshardi.

  Along the flanks of the gigantic creatures bright shapes were blinking, almost faster than Tray’s eyes could follow. He couldn’t make out what the shapes represented. Were they a language, a set of symbols?

  There were more than fifty of them, cruising leisurely through the deep waters, their enormous mouths stretched wide open as they scooped in seawater that bore the nearly invisible crustaceans that they fed upon.

  Then one of the outlying Leviathans flashed an unmistakable picture: an image of their own submersible, Athena, accurate down to the sensor blisters dotting the vessel’s spherical hull.

  “They’ve seen us!” Loris exclaimed.

  “They don’t seem to be running away,” said Sheshardi.

  Kell suggested, “Maybe they’ve seen our submersibles before. Maybe they recognize us and aren’t afraid of us.”

  Tray heard himself say, “More likely they recognize that we’re not dangerous. We don’t present a threat to them.”

  Almost sneering, Bricknell demanded, “How could we represent a threat to them? We’re so small they could swallow us whole.”

  “Pleasant thought,” said Loris.

  Tray wanted to get to his feet but he was still strapped into the chair. Staring at the viewscreens, he saw that the image of their submersible was now flashing on the flanks of all of the Leviathans.

  “A welcome mat?” Kell wondered, with a smile.

  “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” Bricknell said.

  Sheshardi spoke up. “There is no record of a Leviathan ever harming one of our vessels. On the contrary, some crews swear the beasts helped them when they were in trouble.”

  “Helped them?”

  “Carried them up from the depths toward the surface of the ocean,” Sheshardi replied. “On their backs.”

  “They recognized that we are aliens,” Kell said, his voice hollow with wonder. “They realized that we came from beyond their ocean.”

  “Anthropomorphizing,” Bricknell countered. “We can’t ascribe human motivations to a completely alien life-form.”

  “You’re probably right,” Kell agreed. Somewhat reluctantly, Tray thought.

  As they slowly approached the Leviathan herd, Tray saw that the flanks of the immense beasts were lined with eyes: row after row of eyes that all seemed to be staring at them. Staring at him. />
  He shuddered.

  Kell half rose from his seat and grasped the back of Sheshardi’s command chair. “I think this is close enough, for the present.”

  Tray heard the Abo ask, “You don’t wish to get closer?” He sounded disappointed.

  “Not just yet,” Kell answered.

  HUNTERS

  For eternally long moments the humans merely stared at the control panel’s viewscreens, goggling at the enormous size and placid grace of the Leviathans.

  They glided through the water, seemingly effortlessly, their enormous mouths stretched wide as they scooped in tons of seawater.

  “They are feeding,” said Sheshardi. “They eat tiny creatures that float in the ocean.”

  Then Loris noted, “The ones in the middle of the group seem smaller, don’t you think?”

  Kell shook his head. “No, they’re just farther away.”

  “They’re not juveniles?”

  “The Leviathans don’t have juveniles,” Kell explained. “Not in our sense. They are aggregate beasts. When they reproduce, a pair of them breaks apart into dozens of component pieces, which then reassemble themselves into three new adult Leviathans, where before there had been only two.”

  Tray nodded, remembering reading of the strange way of reproduction that the Leviathans utilized.

  “No sex?” Bricknell asked.

  “Not in our sense,” Kell replied.

  Suddenly Para pointed at the viewscreen in the top right corner of the control panel. “Look!” it called out. “Darters.”

  Tray saw a formation of six—no, seven—sleek shark-like forms speeding past the outer rim of the Leviathans’ formation.

  “Darters!” Loris gasped.

  Darters, Tray echoed silently: Lean, streamlined predators that hunted the Leviathans and often attacked the colossal beasts when some of their members were disassembling in their reproductive behavior.

  But none of the Leviathans were breaking apart, he saw. The Darters had no chance against an intact, healthy Leviathan. Or did they?

  And then, out of the corner of his eye, Tray noticed one of the Leviathans in the middle of the herd visibly trembling, shuddering as if a powerful electric shock was convulsing through it. Although the creature was well inside the formation of Leviathans, the Darters all pivoted at the same instant and sliced through the formation of gigantic beasts like a pattern of bullets.

  Tray stared at the scene. The Leviathan was breaking up into twitching, quivering pieces, each alive, its eyes wide as the shark-like Darters arrowed in on them.

  “Why don’t they help him?” Loris cried out.

  “They cannot,” said Sheshardi, in a hollow voice.

  “Why don’t we help him?” Tray demanded.

  “How?” Kell replied. “With what?”

  It was all over in a few agonizing moments. The Darters gobbled up nearly half the disassembled components of the creature and then sped through the Leviathans’ formation and out into the open sea once more. More than a dozen fragments of the dissociated Leviathan floated along with the other, intact animals.

  In a near-whisper, Loris asked, “What happens to … to those … pieces?”

  Sheshardi’s voice came from the command chair. “If another Leviathan breaks apart soon enough, they will join its pieces and perhaps produce two new animals.”

  “If not?” Tray heard himself ask.

  “The pieces will eventually sink down, probably eaten eventually by Darters or other predators that exist at much deeper levels of the ocean.”

  “What a shame,” Loris murmured.

  Bricknell tried to brighten them up with, “Nature, red in fang and claw.”

  “Yes,” said Kell softly, thoughtfully. “But it isn’t very pretty, is it?”

  COMMUNICATING?

  With the Darters gone, what was left of the Leviathan herd continued on its way through the deep ocean, ingesting tons upon tons of food-bearing seawater.

  “Where does the water go?” Loris asked. “They don’t keep it inside them, do they?”

  “Not at all,” answered Kell. “They expel it through vents in their flanks.”

  Bricknell added, “If they want to, they can squirt out the water at very high velocities: a sort of deep-sea jet propulsion.”

  “Why didn’t they do that to get away from the Darters?” Tray wondered aloud.

  “Ask them,” said Kell.

  “You can attempt to communicate with them,” Sheshardi’s voice came from his command chair. “There are communications systems built into the armrests of your seats.”

  Tray glanced down and saw that both his armrests were indeed studded with control pads.

  “Touch the green ones for a tutorial on using the comm system,” Sheshardi instructed.

  As their pilot edged Athena closer to the periphery of the Leviathan herd, Tray studied the instructions playing on the miniature viewscreen that had popped up from his left armrest.

  Seems simple enough, he told himself. You draw a picture on the screen with your thumbnail and the equipment flashes your picture across the ship’s hull.

  “We can’t all try to send out messages at once,” Kell stated the obvious. “I suggest we go in alphabetical order.”

  “Then I’m first!” Bricknell shouted happily.

  “I’ll be second,” said Loris.

  Kell dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “One of the privileges of nobility,” he said graciously. “The advantage of having a ‘de’ in front of your last name.”

  Tray realized that being named Williamson was no advantage at all.

  * * *

  Bricknell presented a crude cutaway sketch of their vessel, with stick figures representing the five people inside it. Tray felt a spark of resentment that he didn’t include Para, but it made no difference: The Leviathans made no response to his attempt at communication.

  Loris hesitated when Kell pointed at her. For several moments she simply stared at the tiny screen standing up on her armrest. Finally she drew a stylized picture of a human male and female, naked and complete even to their reproductive organs.

  “Like the old Voyager spacecraft drawings,” Kell murmured, “from back in the twentieth century.”

  One of the closest Leviathans put up an exact copy of Loris’s drawing. Within seconds, all the Leviathans bore the image of a pair of naked human beings on their flanks.

  “Well, that got a response,” Kell said.

  “Maybe if we animated the drawing,” Bricknell suggested, his voice dripping innuendo.

  “You have a dirty mind,” Loris grumbled at him.

  “In a clean body,” Bricknell smirked.

  Shaking his head, Kell said softly, “You realize how different we are when you try to communicate with the Leviathans.”

  With dirty pictures, Tray thought.

  Kell was going on, “They’re obviously intelligent, yet we have practically no points of similarity with them, no … no Rosetta Stone, so to speak.”

  “Nothing that translates from their experience to our own,” Bricknell agreed.

  “Or vice versa,” Kell said.

  Loris pointed at him and said, “It’s your turn now, Mr. Kell.”

  Tray noticed that her fingernails were each painted space-black, with specks representing stars engraved on them. Tray recognized the Orion constellation and, on her other hand, Ursa Major and the Big Dipper.

  “My turn,” Kell answered, half to himself.

  He sketched out a crude diagram showing the Jovian ocean, the layer of atmosphere above its surface, and the colorful cloud deck atop it all. In the depths of the ocean he added smudges representing the Leviathans and a circle that indicated Athena. Then he drew an arrow from the vessel’s location, pointing upward, into the clouds and beyond.

  “A geography lesson,” Kell said, smiling, as he pressed the pad that transmitted his drawing to the projection screen on the ship’s curving hull.

  “Ambitious,” Bricknell remarked.
<
br />   “Show them where we come from,” said Kell.

  The instant Kell’s drawing appeared on Athena’s hull, Loris’s earlier sketch winked out on all of the Leviathans. For several moments there was no response whatever, but at last Kell’s image flashed into life on one, two, six, and then all of the Leviathans.

  “Well, they see your picture,” Bricknell said.

  “But do they understand what it means?” Kell wondered aloud. “Do they know what an arrow denotes?”

  From the command chair Sheshardi’s voice rose, “They have seen your picture, sir. Now I believe they are trying to understand it.”

  For painfully long moments the five humans stared at their screens, waiting, hoping desperately for some response from the Leviathans.

  At last Kell admitted, “I’m afraid they just don’t understand it.”

  Unconsciously shaking his head, Tray said, “They don’t have the same background of understanding that we do. To them, this ocean is the entire universe. To them, it’s unending, eternal. They have no idea that there’s a surface to the ocean, and an atmosphere above it—”

  “And other worlds in space,” Bricknell added.

  “And a universe filled with galaxies,” said Loris.

  Kell exhaled loudly and put on a brave smile. “Well, Mr. Williamson,” he said, turning toward Tray, “it’s your turn. What do you want to show them?”

  Tray hadn’t made his decision until the moment Kell asked the question.

  “Not a picture,” he said. “I want to send them a message in music.”

  MUSIC

  “Music,” Bricknell scoffed. “They don’t communicate in sonics.”

  “Yes, they do,” Sheshardi countered. “They emit sound waves of ultralow frequency, quite inaudible to us.”

  Tray asked, “Can we send out such low-frequency signals?”

  Silence. Tray imagined the Abo flicking his stubby fingers over his armrest controls, checking his system’s capabilities.

  “Yes,” came the answer at last. “I believe we can project sound waves of an appropriate frequency.”