Fuzzy thoughts floated by. The corridor seemed to ripple as I followed the bridge officer. I felt like some Earthside dope-o on mindwipe.
I took a deep breath and my head cleared a little. The bridge officer scowled at me. I tried to give him a smile with some bravado in it. It didn’t work. We reached the electronics lab.
The Commander himself opened the door and waved the bridge officer away. He didn’t look angry. In fact, he hardly saw me as I came in and closed the door. He was gazing off into space, thinking.
Dad and Mr. Jablons were sitting at one of the work benches. Dr. Kadin was working at a high-vacuum tank in the middle of the room. His hands were inserted in the waldoes and he was moving something inside the tank.
Dad looked up when I came in. “Ah, there you are, Mr. Lucky.”
“Huh?”
“Look in the tank.”
I walked over and looked through the glass. The Faraday cup was inside. Some of the sticky dust had been taken out with the waldo arms and scattered over a series of pyrex plates. The plates were spotted with green and blue chemicals and one of the plates was fixed under a viewing microscope.
“That contaminant you found inside the cup wasn’t dust, Matt,” my father said. “It is a colony of—well, something like spores. They are still active, as far as we can tell.”
Dr. Kadin turned and looked at me. “Quite so. It would seem, young Mr. Bohles, that you have discovered life on Jupiter.”
Chapter 14
Suddenly everybody in the room was smiling: Mr. Jablons laughed. “When they write this up in the history books, they’ll have to record that blank look of yours, Matt.”
I realized that my jaw was hanging open and quickly shut it. “Wha—How?”
“How did it get there?” Dr. Kadin. said. “That is a puzzle. I imagine these spores—if that is indeed what they are—somehow traveled up through the Jovian atmosphere by riding along—‘piggyback’ I believe you say—on the electric fields produced by the turbulent storms.”
Mr. Jablons slapped his knee. “I knew it would happen! Half an hour ago we didn’t know if that dust was alive, and already a theory has raised its head.”
Dr. Kadin ignored him. “You might have a look at them through the microscope,” he said. “There are very interesting aspects.”
I bent my head over the eyepiece of the microscope. Against a yellow smear I could see three brownish lumps. They looked like barbells with a maze of squiggly blue lines inside them. They weren’t moving; the smear had killed them.
“Note the elongated structure,” Dr. Kadin said at my ear. “Most unusual for such a small cell. Of course, these do not appear to be at all similar to Earthly cells in other particulars, so perhaps such a difference is not surprising.”
“I don’t get you,” Dad said.
“I believe these organisms may use that shape to cause a separation of electrical charge in their bodies. Somehow, deep in the atmosphere, they shed charge. Then, when a storm blows them to the top of the cloud layer, they become attached to the complicated electrical field lines near the north pole.”
“That’s what brought them out to Satellite Fourteen?” I asked.
“I think so. It is the only mechanism I can imagine that would work.”
“Why did the Faraday cup malfunction?” Commander Aarons asked. It was the first thing be had said since I arrived.
“Well, consider. When an electron strikes the cup it passes through the positive grid and strikes the negative plate. From there it passes down a wire and charges a capacitor. These spores—or whatever—are also charged; they will be trapped in the same manner. But they do not pass down the wire; only between grid and plate, eventually filling it up. They still retained some of their charge, though, and when they piled up high enough to connect the grid and the plate they shorted out the circuit.” Dr. Kadin looked around, as if for approval.
“That could be why the Faraday cup failed, all right,” Mr. Jablons said.
“I couldn’t tell much from the microscope,” I said. “Dr. Kadin, what are those cells like?”
“They seem to be carbon-based. They are not carbon dioxide absorbers, however, like terrestrial plants; perhaps they breathe methane. They have a thick cell wall and some structures I could not identify. Calling them spores is only a guess, really.”
Commander Aarons shook his head. “You are certain these things couldn’t have been left there by accident—just be something from the Can that was on the Bohles boy’s gloves when he took it out?”
“No. They are like nothing I have ever seen.”
“But what are they doing out there?” Dad said. “Why should organisms evolve that can be thrown clear above the atmosphere? If that bunch hadn’t been trapped in Satellite Fourteen they could have gone all the way to the south pole, riding along on the magnetic fields.”
“That may possibly be the point,” Dr. Kadin said. “Perhaps these are spores and they were migrating.”
“Migrating?” Dad said. “What for?”
“We know there are fewer storms near the poles. A point at the pole does not rotate like the rest of the planet; the atmosphere above it is relatively still. It could be that only under those conditions can life survive in the Jovian atmosphere.”
“I see,” I murmured. “They were migrating to the other livable zone of the planet—the south pole.”
“Perhaps, perhaps.” Dr. Kadin waved his hands. “This is all quite preliminary. I am only advancing speculations, you understand.”
“We can deal with theories later,” Commander Aarons said. He smacked his fist into his palm. “The point is that we’ve found life—the real McCoy! If this doesn’t make ISA sit up and take notice, nothing will.”
“You think we might get to stay?” I said excitedly.
“We’re back in the running, anyway. I am going to get Earthside on the line at once: this will make headlines on every continent, if I am any judge.” He plucked at his moustache, smiling to himself. “Just wait until—”
“If you don’t mind, gentlemen, before you leave I have a piece of data you might find interesting,” Dad said. He got slowly to his feet, pausing for dramatic effect. I grinned. Dad could really play to the house, when he wanted to.
“I couldn’t sleep while Matt was out making an unintentional hero of himself; neither could his mother.” I suddenly noticed bags under his eyes; he was tired. “I spent the time following up a project I’ve been meaning to get to for several weeks.”
He picked a memory cube off the work table and inserted it in a viewscreen slot on the wall. The screen came to life.
At first I thought it was a bull’s-eye—just a bunch of concentric circles with three large ellipses on the outside. Then I picked out one little dot on the rim of each curve and realized this was the orbit pattern of the Jovian moons: the bull’s-eye at the center was Jupiter. As I watched, the dots moved. It was a speeded-up simulation.
“I had the computer plot out this history of the moons over the past month. All thirteen of the larger ones are here. You will notice that the outer moons do not move rapidly and have rather eccentric orbits. The outer three have never been visited by man; they appear to be smaller than the other moons and are probably asteroids captured when Jupiter was young.”
“That is only a hypothesis,” Dr. Kadin said.
“True, but a reasonable one.” Dad paused again. “You have probably heard of the meteor swarms we have recently observed. They strike Jupiter near both the north and south poles. To do that requires an orbit that doesn’t revolve in the same plane as Jupiter’s equator, as the Can’s does. It happens that the outer moons share this property.”
“Ah,” said Dr. Kadin.
“My reasoning wasn’t this clear when I began. At the time I was simply interested in the orbits of the meteor swarms. Previously we had simply followed their orbits backwards until we could be sure they came from far out. I extended the calculation.”
My father pressed a button and the scr
een flickered for a moment. The moon orbits were in yellow; now blue lines crawled away from Jupiter’s circle and spiraled outward.
“This is a history of the meteor orbits, run backwards. This first swarm spreads out a little”—the blue lines fanned open—“and then bunches together again. That is unusual in itself. But notice where they bunch.”
The lines focused together and intersected the eleventh Jovian moon.
“There isn’t very much error in this work; we got good fixes on the swarm.”
“Are you certain they had to strike J-11?” Dr. Kadin said. “It is a very small satellite”.
“About twenty miles across, in fact. But the swarm had to hit it; I’m sure of that.”
“Dad, ‘hit’ is the wrong word, isn’t it? This display is running backwards. You mean the swarm started from J-11, don’t you?”
“Right. Sloppy terminology. The program is still going though—watch this next swarm. The same pattern—spiraling out, bunching.”
We watched the lines inch away from Jupiter. They came together just as they met the yellow dot that was J-12.
“Zap!” Mr. Jablons said. “I don’t understand what’s going on, but it looks beautiful.”
“And strange,” the Commander murmured.
“There’s more.” Dad said. “I’ll speed it up.”
Another family of lines wound outward, meeting at J-11. The next group was a little slower, they took their time, but they all ended up at J-12.
“Three earlier swarms show the same pattern.”
“You have verified these calculations?” Dr. Kadin said. “Yes.”
“I am no astrophysicist.” Commander Aarons said. “Maybe I am missing something in all this.”
Dad shook his head, “I don’t think you are, sir. This is something new to all of us. There isn’t any handy explanation.”
The room was quiet. Everyone was watching the screen. Blue lines crept out from Jupiter again.
“What could possibly cause it?” I said.
Dr. Kadin narrowed his eyes as he studied the lines.
“Let us go and find out,” he said.
Chapter 15
I was on an emotional roller-coaster, of course. I had been for days, without really realizing it.
Soon Dr. Kadin fell into conversation about how to investigate J-11 and J-12. I sat and listened and slowly, slowly, the tension drained out of me. The room got very clear and bright. My arms and legs felt warm and tingly. The things people were saying were very interesting and I followed the conversation closely. But somehow I couldn’t understand. The words were there, sure…but making the connections got harder…and harder. My eyes were sandy…and my eyelids kept creeping down.
I woke up the next morning. In my own bed.
I lay there for a while, feeling lazy and warm and letting my body drift. I thought about all that had happened. So much had come about by accident, the random collisions between people and events. Or it seemed random…
I mused about that for a while and then I got up. No point in lying around forever. Mom and Dad had already left for work. They left me a note on the newspad, telling me to take it easy and rest up. So I went for a walk, of course.
In the corridors outside, as I walked, I watched the faces. They were intent, but the mood was different from…was it only yesterday? People bustled along with fresh energy. A few recognized me. They stopped and slapped me on the back and said boisterous things. I smiled and told them it was just luck, nothing more, because that was the truth.
Zak was punching into a cubbyhole terminal near the comp center. He was frowning and typing as fast as he could. He looked over and saw me. His eyebrows shot up and he typed faster. In a minute he had cleared his program and gave up the terminal. “Matt-o!” He jumped up and came over to me. “I thought you’d be sipping champagne with the Commander.”
“I’d settle for a bowl of cereal.”
“I suppose you know you’re the man on the white horse around here.”
“Dumb luck.”
“Don’t fight it. People need heroes.”
I grunted. Somehow I knew I wasn’t going to like being the center of attention. “What’s the update?” I asked.
“You don’t know? The Sagan is going out to J-11. The crew’s been selected. Aarons announced it an hour ago.”
“Really? He’s moving fast.”
“Aarons wants to follow up your discovery, pronto. The way I figure it is, he doesn’t want to give ISA time to react.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll advise extreme caution—you know bureaucracies. And some factions will say we’re faking it, as a last-ditch measure to keep the Can alive.”
“Jeee-sus.”
“Welcome to the real world.”
“So Aarons is going for J-11. What about probing Jupiter’s atmosphere near the poles?”
Zak shrugged. “Most of the bio boys say that stuff you found comes from deep down—too deep for us to reach.”
“Ummm. Hey, you said the crew’s been selected?”
“Yeah. Aarons said—oh, I get it.” He grinned. “You want to go.”
“Sure. Wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but…” He scowled. “My stock’s not so high right now, anyway.”
“Huh? Why not?”
Zak smiled wryly. “It’s because of you, basically. You remember how Kadin got all fired up about those meteor swarm orbits?”
“Yeah.”
“He assigned a couple of numerical specialists to comb back through the deep-memory storage and get all the records we had. That’ll give us a history of the activity, Kadin thought. Maybe the early automated satellites—the post-Voyager craft—had picked up some odd stuff. So these numerical types went in and got everything out of storage, even the post-Voyager stuff, and started going through it, and…”
He paused significantly. A suspicion blossomed in my mind. “And you… Rebecca and Isaac…”
Zak nodded sourly.
“You said you had a foolproof place to store ’em.” I couldn’t help laughing.
“No need to cackle with glee,” Zak muttered.
“And it had your ident code, right? So they knew right away whose it was.”
“I never thought anybody’d go back into that old crap.”
“Who nailed you?”
“Aarons called me in. Christ, I didn’t think it would be that big a thing. I mean, with all that’s going on—”
“What’d he say?”
“He gave me a long look and said something about improper use of facilities, and how I’d have a watchdog program on all my work from now on.”
“You got off easy.”
“Yeah. I guess. But I’m not any fair-haired boy, I can tell that. The comp center people keep laughing behind my back.”
“Laughing?”
“Yeah. They seem to find some of what Rebecca and Isaac did, well, amusing.”
“Ummm. Not, uh, exciting?”
“I guess not.” Zak looked sour. I could tell he was more bothered by the laughter than the watchdog program. I mean, to have your sexual fantasies taken as inept comedy…
I suppressed a smile and slapped him on the back. “Come on and have some breakfast.”
“Don’t you want to see the crew manifest for Sagan?”
“Oh yeah.” Zak handed me a disposable printout. I scanned the names. Military people, mostly.
“Going to be some trip, all right,” Zak mused.
“Yeah.” Suddenly I wanted to go. To trace the swarms to their origin.
Zak could read my face. “Come on,” he said. “Forget it. You may be the accidental savior, but you’re still a kid.”
We had breakfast. Zak didn’t mind wolfing down a second; it helped console him. I was kind of quiet, thinking about J-11. Zak scooped up the tofu eggs and grumbled over his bad luck.
“You know,” he said at last, “maybe I should’ve stuck to real life. Forget Rebecca and the business angle.”
“Meaning what?”
“I should’ve put my effort into finding Lady X.”
“You’ll never learn, Zak.”
Zak had a shift to work, so I wandered around for a while at loose ends. I wound up in the inner levels, near Hydroponics, and decided to put in some of my chore time there. Everybody has to do twenty hours a month of simple labor—recycling, cleaning filters, hauling stuff, anything that’s so tedious that nobody wants to do it full time. Hydroponics work is mandatory for everybody, though, both because we have to maximize the food cultivated in the space allowed, and because it’s psychologically good for you.
I checked in, got a work suit and found Mom. She was titrating a new fertilizing solution, checking its chemical balance. I left her to that and worked for a while putting patches on the duro tubing. I had to crawl through the close-packed, leafy tangle. In low G the plants grow two, maybe three times Earth norm. Tomatoes look like watermelons, and watermelons—well, you’ve got to see one to believe it. I went by the huge vat that holds Turkey Lurkey and peeked in. The big sweaty pale mass was perking right along, growing so fast you could almost see it swelling up. All the Can’s meat comes from Turkey Lurkey. The chem wizards alter its taste with minute trace impurities, to make it seem like beef or fish or chicken. A lot of people Earthside thought Turkey Lurkey was here because eating live animals was wrong. Maybe that’s a superior philosophical position, but the plain fact is that Turkey Lurkey is the only efficient way we could have any meat at all. There wasn’t room for beef cattle or even chickens. Maybe the ethical issue was wrong anyway, because who was to say Turkey Lurkey wasn’t conscious? Sure, it had a nervous system that made a nineteenth century telegraph line look like an IBM 9000, but what did that mean? Some neurophilosophers Earthside now think that consciousness may be a continuum, right down to plants. Who’s to say? The plants aren’t talking.
On our break I talked to Mom. As soon as I could, I brushed aside the talk about finding the stuff in the satellite. I mean, for some reason, praise from your own mother seems kind of obligatory. She’d say good things no matter what. And anyway, I wasn’t interested in the past. I wanted in on the J-11 mission.
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