The Medusa Encounter

by Paul Preuss

  The nearest echo was now only about forty kilometers away. All of the echoes, he quickly realized, were distributed along the wall of the vortex, moving with it, apparently caught in the vortex like Kon-Tiki itself. He peered through the windows with his telescopic eye and found himself looking at a curiously mottled cloud that almost filled the field of view.

  It was not easy to see, being only a little darker than the whirling wall of mist that formed its back-ground. Not until he had been staring for over a minute did he realize that he had met it before. Quickly he trained Kon-Tiki’s optics on the object, so that Mission Control could share the view.

  The first time he’d seen the thing it had been crawling across the drifting mountains of foam, and he had mistaken it for a giant, many-trunked tree. Now at last he could appreciate its real size and complexity, could even give it a name to fix its image in his mind. For it did not resemble a tree at all, but a jellyfish, such as might be met trailing its tentacles as it drifted along the warm eddies of Earth’s ocean currents. To some early naturalist those trailing tentacles had been reminiscent of the twisting snakes of a Gorgon’s head, thus the creature’s name: Medusa.

  This medusa was almost two kilometers across, with scores of tentacles hundreds of meters long; they swayed back and forth in perfect unison, taking more than a minute for each complete undulation—almost as if the creature were rowing itself through the sky.

  The other radar blips were other, more distant medusas. Falcon focused his sight, and the balloon’s telescope, on half a dozen of them. He could detect no obvious variations in size or shape; they all seemed to be of the same species. He wondered just why they were drifting lazily around in this thousand-kilometer orbit. Were they feeding upon the aerial “plankton” sucked in by the whirlpool—sucked in as Kon-Tiki itself had been?

  “Mission Control, I haven’t heard anything from Dr. Brenner. Did he go back to bed?”

  “Not to bed, Howard,” came Buranaphorn’s delayed reply. “Just to sleep. He’s right beside me, snoring like a baby.”

  “Wake him up.”

  “By the . . .” Brenner’s squawk came through the link a second later. “Howard, that creature is a hundred thousand times as large as the biggest whale! Even if it’s only a gas bag, it must weigh a million tonnes! I can’t even guess at its metabolism. It must generate megawatts of heat to maintain its buoyancy.”

  “It couldn’t be just a gas bag. It’s too good a radar reflector.”

  “You’ve got to get closer.” Brenner’s voice had an edge of contained hysteria.

  “I could do that,” Falcon replied—he could approach the medusa as closely as he wanted, by changing altitude to take advantage of differing wind velocities—but he made no move. Something in him had seized up, in a twinge of paralysis like that he’d experienced in the radio storm.

  “Falcon, you must immediately . . .”

  Buranaphorn firmly interrupted Brenner. “Let’s stay where we are for the present, Howard.”

  “Yes, Flight, let’s do that.” Falcon’s words conveyed relief—and a certain wry amusement at that “we.” An extra thousand kilometers or so of vertical distance made a considerable difference in Mission Control’s point of view.

  But Olaf Brenner offered no apology for his attempt to usurp the flight director’s prerogatives.

  Sparta’s eyes opened. In her sleep she had been listening to the exchange between Mission Control and the fragile balloon whirling through the clouds of Jupiter so far below. Yet there was no comprehension on her ravaged face.

  “Aiingg Zzhhhee . . .” Her throat was full of sand.

  “What?”

  Three men were peering down at her, two young, one older. She didn’t recognize them. Again she tried to focus in, to study them at close range, but her head was about to explode. If she could see into their eyes, read their retinal patterns, she would surely be able to recognize them. . . . But why was her right eye dead? She could form an image only at a fixed, normal angle. She could see no better than any ordinary person.

  “I can’t see,” she said in a whisper, barely more distinctly.

  One of the young men waved his hand in front of her face. She tracked it with her eyes. He held up three fingers. “Can you see my hand? How many fingers?”

  “Three,” she whispered.

  “Keep both eyes open,” said the man, who must be a doctor. He laid the palm of his hand over her right eye. “How many fingers now?”

  “Four. But I can’t see.”

  He moved his palm to cover her left eye. “How many now?”

  “Still four.”

  “Why do you say you can’t see?” The doctor took his hand away from her face. “Are you experiencing distorted vision? Shadows? Any abnormality?”

  She turned her head aside, not bothering to reply. The fool did not understand what she was talking about, and it occurred to her that it was better not to explain things to him.

  “Ellen, we must talk to you,” said one of the others, the old one. Why did he call her that name? It wasn’t hers.

  She tested her bonds, trying not to be obvious about it, and found them strong. She had been strapped to a cushioned surface, a bed, with wide woven bands around her ankles and wrists and middle. Tubes were running into her arms, and she could vaguely sense more tubes and wires sprouting from her head. Those tubes must be doing something to her head. She couldn’t see.

  But she could still listen. . . .

  * * *

  For over an hour now, while Kon-Tiki had been drifting in the gyre of the great whirlpool, Falcon had been experimenting with the videolink’s contrast and gain, trying to record a clearer view of the nearest of the medusas. He wondered if its elusive coloration was some kind of camouflage; perhaps, like many of Earth’s animals, it was trying to lose itself against its background. That was a trick used by both hunters and hunted.

  In which category was the medusa? He didn’t really expect to answer that question in the short time left to him, yet, just before local noon, and without the slightest warning, the answer came.

  Like a squadron of antique jet fighters, five mantas came sweeping through the wall of mist that formed the funnel of the vortex, flying in a V formation directly toward the gray mass of the medusa. There was no doubt in Falcon’s mind that they were on the attack; evidently it had been quite wrong to assume that they were harmless vegetarians.

  Everything happened at such a leisurely pace that it was like watching slo-mo. The mantas undulated along at perhaps fifty klicks; it seemed ages before they reached the medusa, which continued to paddle imperturbably along at an even slower speed. Huge though they were, the mantas looked tiny beside the monster they were approaching. And when they flapped down upon its back, they looked about as big as birds landing on a whale.

  Could the medusa defend itself? Falcon didn’t see how the attacking mantas could be in danger as long as they avoided those huge, clumsy tentacles. And perhaps their host was not even aware of them. They could be insignificant parasites, tolerated as a dog tolerates fleas.

  No, it was obvious the medusa was in distress.

  With agonizing slowness, it began to tip over like a capsizing ship. Ten minutes passed; it had tilted forty-five degrees, and it was rapidly losing altitude.

  Falcon could not help but feel pity for the beleaguered monster. The sight even brought bitter memories, for in a grotesque way the fall of the medusa was almost a parody of the dying Queen’s last moments.

  “Save your sympathies,” said Brenner’s oddly flat voice over the commlink, as if the exobiologist had been reading his mind. “High intelligence can develop only among predators, not among these drifting browsers—whether they’re in the sea or in the air. Those things you call mantas are closer to us than that monstrous bag of gas.”

  Falcon heard out the scientist’s assessment and was moved to dissent. But he said nothing. After all, who could really sympathize with a creature a hundred thousand times larger th
an a whale? Nor did Falcon want to prod Brenner, who must be near utter exhaustion. His remarks were increasingly infected with inappropriate emotion.

  Falcon was saved from further brooding upon the state of Brenner’s soul—or his own—by the sight of the medusa, whose tactics seemed to be having an effect. The mantas had been disturbed by its slow roll and were flapping heavily away from its back, like gorging vultures interrupted during mealtime. Did they somehow prefer an upright orientation, or was something else, invisible to Falcon, spurring them into action?

  They had not moved very far at that, continuing to hover a few yards from the still-capsizing monster, when there was a sudden, blinding flash of light—

  —synchronized with a crash of static on the radio. Falcon felt the jolt as a sour spasm where his stomach used to be. He watched in close-up as one of the mantas slowly twisted end over end, plummeting straight downward, trailing a plume of black smoke behind it as it fell! The resemblance to a fighter going down in flames was quite uncanny.

  In unison the remaining mantas dived steeply away from the medusa, gaining speed by losing altitude. Within minutes they had vanished in the wall of cloud from which they had emerged.

  The medusa, no longer falling, began to roll back toward the horizontal. Soon it was sailing along once more on an even keel, as if nothing had happened.

  “Beautiful!” Brenner’s ardent voice breathed into the commlink, after the first moment of stunned silence. “Electric defenses, like eels and rays. And at least a million volts!” He paused, and resumed with an edge on his voice. “Talk to us, Falcon. Do you see any organs that might have produced the discharge? Anything that looks like an electrode?”

  “No,” said Falcon. He tweaked the resolution. “Something odd here, though. See this pattern? Run a replay—it wasn’t there before.”

  A broad, mottled band had appeared along the side of the medusa, forming a regular checker-board, startling in its geometric precision. Each square was itself speckled in a complex subpattern of short horizontal lines, spaced at equal distances in a geometrically perfect array of rows and columns.

  “You’re right,” said Brenner, with something very like awe in his voice. “That’s new. What do you think?”

  Buranaphorn didn’t give Falcon time to answer the question. “Meter-band radio array, wouldn’t you say, Howard?” He laughed. “Any engineer who didn’t have a biologist’s reputation to protect would know it at a glance.”

  “ ‘S why it returns such a massive echo,” said Falcon.

  “Why, maybe, but why now,” Brenner demanded. “Why has it just appeared?”

  “Could be an aftereffect of the discharge,” Buranaphorn said.

  “Could be,” said Falcon. He paused before he said, “Or maybe it’s listening to us.”

  “On this frequency?” Buranaphorn almost laughed. “Those would have to be meter- , even decameter-length antennas. Judging by their size.”

  Brenner broke in excitedly. “What if they’re tuned to the planet’s radio outbursts? Nature never got around to that on Earth, even though we do have animals with sonar and electric senses—but Jupiter’s almost as drenched in radio as Earth is in sunlight!”

  “Could be a good idea,” said Buranaphorn. “The thing could be tapping into the radio energy. Could be it’s even a floating power plant.”

  “All of which is very interesting,” said Brenner, his voice trembling with that authoritarian edge again, “but there’s a much more important matter to settle. I’m invoking the Prime Directive.”

  For a long moment the radiolink between Mission Control and Kon-Tiki was silent. Even Buranaphorn was quiet.

  Falcon spoke first, with leaden effort. “Please state your reasons.”

  “Until I came here,” Brenner began, with cheer that rang false to his listeners, “I too would have sworn that any creature who could have made a shortwave radio antenna must be intelligent. Now I’m not so sure. This could have evolved naturally. Really, I suppose it’s no more fantastic than the human eye.”

  “Fine and good, Dr. Brenner,” Buranaphorn said. “Why are you invoking the Prime Directive?”

  “We have to play safe,” said Brenner, dropping the false cheer. “We have to assume intelligence, even if none of us here believes it.”

  We, Falcon thought, as he sought to control the roiling emotions that welled up within him. . . .

  “Therefore I am placing this expedition under all the clauses of the Prime Directive,” Brenner said, with a terminal flourish.

  A responsibility which he had never consciously imagined had descended upon Howard Falcon. In the few hours that remained to him, he might become another inhabited planet’s first ambassador from the human race.

  Odd that it came as no surprise—but rather with an irony so delicious that he almost wished the surgeons had restored to him the power of laughter.

  Aboard Garuda, Buranaphorn gave Brenner a searching look: the gray-haired little man had sagged in three dimensions and was floating in his harness like a ball of dough. Buranaphorn said curtly, “I wish I’d let you stay asleep.”

  When it came to research, the Prime Directive could develop into a prime pain in the neck. Nobody seriously doubted that it was well intentioned. After a century of argument, humans had finally learned to profit from their mistakes on their home planet, or so it was hoped—and not only moral considerations but self-interest demanded that these stupidities should not be repeated elsewhere in the solar system. That’s one of the reasons the guy from Voxpop was here, right? To make sure they stuck to it.

  Nobody in this crew needed reminding. To treat a possibly superior intelligence as the settlers of Australia and North America had treated their aborigines, as the English had treated the Indians, as practically everybody had treated the tribes of Africa . . . well, that way lay disaster.

  Buranaphorn persisted. “Doctor, I’m serious. Don’t you think you ought to get some real rest?” After all, the Prime Directive’s first clause was keep your distance. Make no approach. Make no attempt to communicate. Give them plenty of time to study you—although exactly what was meant by “plenty of time” had never been spelled out. That much alone was left to the discretion of the human on the spot. “Whatever that thing is, we’re not going to get any better visuals while it’s night down there.”

  Brenner looked at him oddly. “I couldn’t possibly sleep. Do you know how long we’ve been waiting for this moment?”

  “As you say, Doctor.” One of those, thought Buranaphorn—and up until an hour ago he’d had me fooled. Brenner had seemed so sane, so level headed. He was the guy who kept saying they might find some germs down there . . . but nothing more.

  This mission seemed to have attracted a lot of types who’d invested their life hopes (to coin a phrase) in the clouds of Jupiter—certified engineers, but closet religionists just the same. The type that had called themselves Creation “scientists” back in the 20th century. For his part, Meechai Buranaphorn was an ex-rocket jock and an aeronautical engineer who wore his Buddhism lightly. Not that he went out of his way to squash bugs—and he never ate meat unless, you know, it had been raised to be eaten. But some of these guys . . . you’d think they were expecting instant reincarnation or something. Buranaphorn forced his thoughts back to the status of the mission.

  At least the two Space Board heavies had cleared out of the place; the way they’d been behaving, you’d think they were trying to start trouble. But maybe they’d had a reason to be here after all. Who would have thought . . . ? He keyed the bridge. “What’s the word on the stowaway?”

  Rajagopal came back at him. “There is no word,” she said.

  “Come on, give me something, Raj.” The first mate had that infuriating haughtiness that, in Buranaphorn’s opinion, came naturally to Indian women. Especially those in positions of authority.

  But Rajagopal relented. “She and Redfield are locked in the clinic with our Space Board visitors.”

  “How’s
the captain taking it?”

  Chowdhury himself came on the comm. “Please do your job, Mr. Buranaphorn, and let us do ours. Don’t distract yourself with inessentials. Your mission is the reason we are all here.”

  Thanks for the reminder, jerk, Buranaphorn thought. But he kept the thought to himself.

  Inside the ship’s tiny clinic, Sparta was unconscious again.

  “I didn’t hit her that hard,” Blake said, for what must have been the hundredth time.

  This time the blond doctor—he was from an old Singapore family, Dutch by ancestry—didn’t bother to reply. He’d already explained at length that the woman’s intercranial blood vessels had been rendered dangerously permeable by her use of the drug Striaphan, found in huge quantity on her person—use which had evidently been massive and prolonged. Even a moderate blow to the head was enough to have caused rapid subdural hematoma.

  Blood on the brain was not all that uncommon aboard spacecraft; flying around weightless, people tended to collide with things head first. The clinic’s nanosurgical kit could have handled the routine noninvasively, perhaps within a couple of hours, had the patient been in good health, as most space workers were. Unfortunately, this woman was severely malnourished and her lungs were teeming with pneumonia—not overwhelming medical problems, but ones rarely encountered in space and, in combination with the concussion and blood clot, definitely life-threatening.

  Things would be a lot easier, thought the doctor, if he could get rid of the kibitzers. The clinic, a wedge of a room off the recreation area, was small enough already without having to share it with this distraught character Redfield and this gray hulk of a Space Board officer—and where the hell had he come from, flashing his badge and pulling Council of Worlds rank?

  “Stay here, Doctor Ullrich,” said the officer. “Mr. Redfield and I will be back shortly.”