by Ben Bova
Her lungs felt raw, and there was a cold knot in the pit of her stomach, but she was breathing.
“Immersion complete,” Dorn said, his voice strangely low, reverberating like a moan from hell.
“Copy immersion complete,” came the voice of the mission controller, also low now, distorted.
Looking squarely at Deirdre, Dorn asked, “Is everyone all right? Any pains? Any problems?”
“I’m … all right,” Deirdre said, her own voice sounding like a bassoon in her ears.
“Okay,” said Corvus.
“No problems,” Yeager said. Deirdre thought it sounded grudging.
“Very well,” said Dorn. “Now we ratchet up the pressure.”
Deirdre knew it would take precisely three hours to increase the perfluorocarbon pressure to the point where it was designed to be. Three hours of sitting in this cramped little metal womb and doing nothing except waiting for your body to break down, your internal cells to implode, your brain to go berserk.
None of that happened. They talked to one another, meaningless chatter to pass the time. Corvus made a few pathetically weak jokes. Yeager kept telling them that “all things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” No one laughed.
Deirdre thought she felt a dull pain in her abdomen, but it was so slight she didn’t mention it. Psychosomatic, she told herself.
Then she remembered her conversation with Katherine Westfall, at the party Dr. Archer had given them a few nights earlier.
After her toast with the faux champagne, Westfall had pulled Deirdre to one side of the crowded conference room and smiled coldly at her.
“I understand that your case of rabies has been cured,” she said.
Deirdre nodded happily, the champagne tickling her nose. “Yes. Dr. Mandrill says there’s no trace of the virus in my blood now.”
“Thanks to nanotherapy,” Westfall said.
Deirdre nodded again, uncertainly this time. She didn’t know how much she should admit to.
“You’re a very fortunate young woman. Dr. Archer went to great lengths to help you,” Westfall said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m very grateful.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Now I can go on the mission without any worries … about my health, that is.”
Westfall said nothing, merely maintaining her sphinxlike smile.
A little hesitantly, Deirdre asked, “Do you still want me to keep you informed? Once we come back, I mean.”
With the slightest shake of her head Westfall replied, “That won’t be necessary. Not at all. I’m fully satisfied with my other sources of help.”
Deirdre’s blood had run cold at the sight of Westfall’s eyes. Although her lips were smiling, Katherine Westfall’s eyes were like a pair of razors, like the eyes of a poisonous snake.
“Full pressure,” Dorn announced.
Deirdre snapped out of her memory. The capsule was fully pressurized. Time for the next step of the mission.
“Now we separate from the station and rendezvous with Faraday,” said Yeager, needlessly. They all knew the procedure. Max is talking because he’s nervous, she thought.
Indeed, Yeager chattered every step of the way, his voice basso deep in the perfluorocarbon, as the capsule left station Gold and glided the short distance to Faraday, co-orbiting with the station. While Yeager told them all how cleverly he had designed the system, the capsule locked onto Faraday’s main hatch. Led by Dorn, the four of them swam down the long metal-walled tunnel that penetrated through the twelve pressure spheres of the ship and ended at the ship’s bridge, in the vessel’s core.
Deirdre floated into the spherical chamber and looked around at the consoles and display screens studding the bulkheads. It was just like the simulators that they had trained on, back in the immersion center aboard Gold’s third wheel.
“Well,” said Yeager, “here we are.”
“Home sweet home,” Corvus said, with a lopsided grin. Even his voice sounded weirdly deep, distorted.
Then Yeager leaned toward her and said, in a near whisper, “By the way, you look sexier than ever in that buzz cut.”
Deirdre smiled with relief.
LAUNCH
Standing in Faraday’s cramped bridge with little to do while the ship swung in orbit around massive Jupiter, Deirdre felt a dull ache in her stomach, as if she had eaten something that disagreed with her. It’s the pressure, she thought. We’ll all have aches and pains from the pressure. They warned us about it, about how the diaphragm will feel sore from working in high pressure. But in the back of her mind she saw Katherine Westfall’s reptilian eyes glittering at her.
Deirdre’s assignment was to monitor the ship’s sensor displays—unless or until Corvus made contact with the leviathans. Her station was to the right of Dorn, who stood at the bridge’s central console and handled the ship’s controls. Dorn also stayed in contact with the mission controller. Sure enough, Deirdre saw on the display screen built into Dorn’s main console that the controller was the little blond Russian woman who had seemed so friendly with Max.
There were no chairs in the ship’s bridge: none were needed as they floated weightlessly in the perfluorocarbon liquid. Yeager had slid his feet into the restraining loops beside Dorn, and was busily tapping out commands on the auxiliary keyboard of the central control console, at the cyborg’s elbow. If Dorn was annoyed by the engineer’s behavior, he gave no sign of it.
Corvus’s job was devoted exclusively to the deep brain stimulation equipment. He had run his console, on Dorn’s left, through a perfunctory systems check as soon as they had departed from station Gold. Now, with nothing to do while Faraday orbited Jupiter, Andy had floated over to stand beside Deirdre.
“What’s Max doing?” Deirdre asked Corvus as he hovered beside her. She tried to whisper but her voice still sounded like a moaning foghorn.
“Checking out the ship’s systems, I guess,” Corvus answered. “He wants to make sure everything’s working right before we go diving into the clouds.”
Deirdre remembered that the mission control chief had teasingly called Max “little father” at the party. Now she saw how apt the label was. She watched as Yeager methodically called up every one of the ship’s systems and subsystems, ticking off the green lights with a tap of his finger against the console display’s touchscreen.
At last Yeager turned toward her with a half smile and said, “Everything’s in the green.”
“Isn’t that what you expected, Max?” she asked.
“Yeah. Sure.” His smile widened. “But it’s good to see my baby’s working the way she should.”
Dorn turned slightly from his post at the control console and announced, “Time line indicates we should take a meal.”
“Already?” Deirdre asked.
“We’ve been aboard for nearly eight hours,” said Dorn.
“That long?”
“Twelve hours since breakfast,” Corvus said.
“I don’t feel hungry,” said Yeager.
“That’s because your stomach is filled with perfluorocarbon,” Dorn said. “We won’t feel normal hunger pangs.”
Corvus said, “Yeah, the medics told us about that, didn’t they?”
“We must take meals on schedule,” Dorn said, very seriously. “Otherwise our performances will deteriorate.”
“Wouldn’t want to deteriorate,” Yeager said, heading for the food dispenser. Then he added, “Could be dangerous.”
Deirdre watched Max as he floated over to the dispenser. It looked like a tall, oblong vending machine, except that its face was blank metal with a single square display screen built into it, and it had a slim hose hooked to one side.
“I think I’ll have a filet mignon, medium rare, smothered with onions,” Yeager joked as he unlimbered the hose.
“And ketchup,” Corvus added.
Yeager shot him a disapproving glare.
Deirdre watched, half fascinated, half in dread, as Max clampe
d the end of the hose to the feeding port in the base of his neck. His expression was strange: He seemed to be trying to smile, but the revulsion he felt was clearly etched on his face.
The dispenser’s screen lit up briefly, showing what looked like a pie chart, all cherry red except for a tiny sliver of gray. That must represent Max’s meal, she thought.
Within a minute the dispenser gave out a tone that would have been a bell’s ding in normal air. In the perfluorocarbon it sounded more like a metallic clunk. Max disconnected the hose and held it out for Corvus.
“Delicious!” he announced. “The steak was a little underdone, though.”
Corvus took the hose from his hand. “What’s for dessert?” he wisecracked.
One by one the men went to the dispenser and hooked the feeding hose to their ports. Yeager took over at the control board when Dorn went for his meal. Deirdre hung back, wondering what it felt like.
Dorn held out the hose to her. “It’s your turn, Dee,” he said, almost solemnly.
Taking a deep breath, Deirdre accepted the hose from Dorn’s prosthetic hand.
“You need any help with that?” Yeager asked, with his old leer.
Deirdre felt grateful for it. Max breaks the tension, she thought.
Aloud, she replied, “Keep your distance, Max. I can do this for myself, thank you.”
She pushed the end of the hose against her feeding port and felt a sharp, brief sting as its hyperfine needle penetrated the port’s protruding shell. Her teeth clenched, Deirdre watched the dispenser’s display until it dinged and the screen said FEEDING COMPLETE.
She felt no different, but was glad when she disconnected the hose and hung it up in its slot on the dispenser’s side. What an awful way to have a meal, she thought.
Dorn, back at his control post, said into the built-in microphone, “Atmospheric entry retroburn in one minute.”
The blond woman’s image in his display screen nodded. “Retroburn in sixty seconds, on my mark.… Mark!”
Deirdre slid her feet into a pair of restraining loops set into the deck. We’re going into the clouds, she said to herself. We’re going into Jupiter.
LEVIATHAN
Leviathan signaled to the nearest member that it must soon leave the Kin for budding. The message flashed inward, toward the Elders, glimmers of blue and green flickering through the vast formation.
Once again Leviathan pondered why the Elders insisted that members go off alone to bud. That makes us vulnerable to the darters, Leviathan reasoned. It would be better to stay within the formation, protected against their slashing insatiable teeth.
Many members of the Kin never returned from their buddings, Leviathan knew. Why do the Elders insist on risking our members so? They say the Symmetry demands it. They say that it has always been so, thus it must always remain so.
Leviathan wondered why. Could it be that those members who budded successfully, who fought off the darters and returned to the Kin, made the Kin stronger? The weak fed the darters, the strong returned to the Kin.
But of what good is that? Leviathan asked itself. Once a member returns to the Kin it is safe from the darters. The predators never attack the Kin in all its strength. They would be destroyed if they tried.
The Symmetry. Everything we do is intended to maintain the Symmetry. That must mean that the darters are part of the Symmetry. A new realization shocked Leviathan’s consciousness. Does the Symmetry require that we offer ourselves to feed the darters? Does the Symmetry demand that we sacrifice members of the Kin to keep the darters among us?
How could this be? Leviathan wondered. Why don’t we protect our own members against the darters? Why do we allow them to kill our own kind?
Is it to make the Kin stronger? To get rid of the weak ones? Sacrifice individuals for the good of the group?
Leviathan considered that possibility with loathing. Why don’t we attack the darters? Why do we allow them to feed on us? We could kill them all and then the world would be safe for the Kin. We could bud in peace and safety, once the darters are eliminated.
That would alter the Symmetry, it is true. But what’s wrong with that? We could make the Symmetry better, safer, stronger.
Leviathan wished it were close enough to the Elders to show them this idea. At its present station, out on the periphery of the Kin’s formation, messages had to be relayed inward from one member to another before they reached the Elders. And then the Elders’ answer had to be relayed back.
If we could show them my thoughts directly, display my ideas to their eyes without others in between, perhaps we could convince them. Perhaps we could make them see the rightness of our concept. A world without darters! A world without fear, where we could bud in safety and grow in numbers without limit.
Leviathan wanted to break free of its station on the Kin’s periphery and swim deep into the formation and confront the Elders directly. But such insolence was unthinkable. The Elders would have nothing to do with such an upstart.
And besides, the urge to bud was building within Leviathan’s member parts. Soon it would be irresistible, a blind unreasoning urge that would blot out all other thoughts, all other needs. Instead of swimming inward toward the Elders, Leviathan knew that very soon it would have to leave the Kin and face the ravening darters. Alone.
KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS
Rodney Devlin looked properly humble as he was ushered into Westfall’s sitting room by the cadaverous, dark-suited aide who served as her personal secretary. His shaved scalp gleamed as if it were polished with oil, while Devlin’s lean, lantern-jawed face seemed somehow to be almost mocking behind his red mustache, despite his lowered eyes.
Westfall nodded to the aide and he silently left the sitting room, sliding the door shut without a sound. She was wearing simple lounging pajamas as she sat on the room’s comfortably upholstered sofa. Devlin was in his usual white working clothes, rumpled and stained, looking altogether scruffy.
“They’re off on their journey into the ocean,” she said as the erstwhile cook crossed the carpeted floor toward her.
“You fed her the nanos?” he asked, his voice low and respectful, his chef’s floppy hat clutched in his hands.
“At the party, when you gave them to me,” Westfall said. “They should start to work on her within a few hours, from what you told me.”
Devlin nodded mutely.
“And then they’ll go to work on the others,” Westfall added. “Which will be the end of their mission and the destruction of Dr. Grant Archer and his scientific minions.”
A puzzled expression on his mustachioed face, Devlin asked, “Why’re you doin’ this? What’ve you got against Archer and those people in the submersible?”
“That’s my business,” Westfall said coldly. “You can be glad that you’re not going to jail. That’s enough for you to know.”
“Yes’m.”
For several heartbeats the room was silent, Westfall eyeing Devlin like a cat watching a mouse, Devlin standing there waiting for her next words.
At last she said, “Tell me about this man Muzorewa.”
“Zeb?” Devlin’s face showed surprise. “He useta be director of this station.”
“I know that. He’s been something of a mentor to Archer, over the years, hasn’t he?”
Shrugging, Devlin replied, “I s’pose so. Kinda like a father figure to him, almost. Grant was just a young pup when he first came here, y’know. Zeb took him under ’is wing, so to speak.”
“If Archer is relieved of his position as director of this station, would Muzorewa take the job again?”
Devlin puzzled over that question for a moment. Tricky one, that, he said to himself. Why’s she asking? What’s she after?
“Well?” Westfall demanded.
“I don’t think so,” Devlin answered. “Zeb’s got an endowed chair at the university in Cairo. And he’s a high mucky-muck at Selene University. I don’t see him comin’ back here.”
Westfall nodded,
satisfied. Devlin got the feeling he had just saved Zeb Muzorewa’s career. Or maybe his life.
* * *
Linda Vishnevskaya checked the mission profile displayed on the leftmost screen of her console against the actual performance of Faraday. The two curves overlapped almost perfectly.
To the image of Dorn in her central screen she said, “You should be breaking through the clouds in six minutes.”
The cyborg nodded solemnly. “Six minutes,” he repeated. “All systems are performing within nominal limits.”
Vishnevskaya glanced at the color-coded lights running along the right side of her console. All green.
“The ship is running smoothly,” she agreed. “Please congratulate Dr. Yeager for me.”
Dorn asked, “Would you like to speak with him?”
Fighting down the impulse to smile happily, Vishnevskaya said tautly, “Yes. For a moment.”
Dorn turned away from the screen and called to Yeager, who slid into view on the display.
“Everything is going well, little father,” she said, dimpling into a smile despite herself.
Yeager looked slightly embarrassed. “So far, so good,” he muttered.
“How do you feel?” she asked, quickly adding, “The medical team is monitoring your physical conditions, of course.”
“I feel okay,” Yeager said. “Kind of chilly in this soup, but I guess we’ll get warmer as we dive deeper into the ocean.”
“Yes.” Vishnevskaya studied Yeager’s face. He seemed normal, despite the perfluorocarbon he was immersed in. Perhaps his face was a little puffy, but the medics claimed that was to be expected.
“Well,” she said, “I just wanted to wish you good luck before communications cut off.”
He nodded. A little warily, she thought. As if he were afraid of saying something he didn’t want the others to hear.
“Thanks. We’ll be okay.”
“Of course. You designed the vessel well.”
