by Ben Bova
The phone screen went blank. Archer turned back toward Devlin, who was still sitting upright on the recliner.
“I’d better get outta here,” Devlin said.
“No, Red. You stay right where you are. I want you here when she comes in.”
Devlin’s russet eyebrows rose toward his scalp. “I’d rather not, y’know.”
“I’m not asking you, Red,” Archer said, with steel in his voice. “I’m ordering you.”
* * *
Katherine Westfall didn’t bother to summon any of her aides or security guards as she strode down the passageway toward Grant Archer’s office. No need, she told herself. I’ll have this moment all to myself. I want to savor the look on his face when he realizes that his career has been shattered.
Should I tell him that Elaine O’Hara was my half sister? No, she said to herself. That’s none of his business. Keep the family connection out of it. But maybe I’ll hint that the IAA will launch an investigation into his criminally negligent leadership that led to the death of four people. Once I’m chairperson of the governing council that’s just what I’ll do. I’ll pay him back for my sister and make certain he’ll never hold a scientific post anywhere in the solar system.
She looked forward to reaching Archer’s office. Westfall felt strong, confident. If it weren’t for the nervous twinge in her stomach, she thought, she’d feel absolutely perfect.
* * *
Red Devlin was fidgeting nervously as they waited for Westfall’s arrival.
“You’re certain that they were out to murder you?” Archer asked, still sitting on the little desk chair.
Devlin gave him a sour look. “They pop into my kitchen after midnight. Three of ’em. They weren’t lookin’ for my recipe for lemon meringue pie.”
“And why did you hide out here, in my office?”
Devlin brushed at his bristly hair. “Couldn’t think of anyplace better. Figured they’d be watchin’ the security cameras so they’d know where I went. I was hopin’ that they wouldn’t bust into your office. If they did, I was gonna phone you, send you a panic SOS.”
Archer nodded. “According to the security log, all the passageway cameras were turned off for a couple of hours, starting at midnight.”
Whistling between his teeth, Devlin said, “So there wouldn’t be any evidence of them shovin’ me out an airlock.”
“She got to the technician on the midnight shift,” Archer said, clear distaste on his bearded face.
“She can get to just about anybody, one way or th’ other.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” said Grant Archer.
He tapped his phone console’s miniature keyboard and saw Katherine Westfall marching along the passageway like a conquering empress. At least the surveillance cameras are back on, he thought.
Turning back to Devlin, Archer pointed as he said, “Red, get into the lavatory there. I’ll call you when I want you.”
The Red Devil looked positively grateful as he hurried to the little room. He’s frightened of confronting Westfall, Archer thought. Can’t blame him; I’m not looking forward to this myself.
DEEPER
Andy Corvus glided over to Dorn’s side. “Can you send them a picture about my DBS probe?”
The cyborg looked up from his console screens. “If you draw the picture for me I’m sure that I can run it on the outer hull’s display lights.”
Nodding somewhat nervously, Corvus slid through the perfluorocarbon liquid to the console built into the curving bulkhead on Dorn’s left. Deirdre disengaged her feet from the floor loops at her console and made her way past Max Yeager to stand at Andy’s side.
“Can I help you?” she asked softly.
Corvus nodded without taking his eyes from his console’s central screen. His attempt to draw a picture looked ragged to Deirdre, childish and uncertain.
“Here,” she said. “Let me.” She leaned across his lanky frame and poised her fingers above the arrow keys on his board. “What do you want to show?”
“I want them to understand that we’re going to fire a probe into the hide of one of them.”
“A harpoon.” Yeager snickered. “They’ll love that.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Corvus said, with some heat. “That’s what this mission is all about. Remember?”
“We’ve already made contact with them,” Yeager countered. “We don’t need your brain probe.”
“We sure do! If it works we can get inside their minds and really start to understand them.”
“If it works.”
Dorn said mildly, “If the leviathans accept being harpooned.”
And if the DBS actually records their brain functions, Deirdre added silently. She didn’t say it aloud because Andy had enough opposition to deal with from Max.
“There,” she said, nodding toward Andy’s screen. “Does that show what you want them to see?”
* * *
Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the message it had flashed. Deep in its central brain Leviathan pondered the meaning of this. Could this alien be intelligent? It signaled the replicant, asking its opinion.
The replicant signed the same sort of puzzlement that Leviathan itself felt. Of course, Leviathan reasoned. The replicant has not had enough experiences to deviate much from our own thoughts.
Leviathan reviewed what it knew about the alien. It was larger than any of the other aliens that had invaded their domain. It gave no sign of feeding on the particles drifting down from the cold abyss above. It had attacked the darters when Leviathan was replicating and helpless. That is a sign of intelligence, the willingness to help another.
Leviathan remembered another alien it had encountered, long ago. It too had fought a pack of darters and been hurt in the battle. When it was sinking into the hot abyss below, Leviathan had tried to help it, actually carried it on its own back upward, away from the cruel heat and crushing pressure of the depths. The alien had repaid this kindness by scalding Leviathan’s wounded hide with searing heat. Then it fled up into the cold abyss, never to be seen again.
Now this new alien had appeared. It was much larger than the earlier one, but like it, this alien was hard-shelled, cold, unlike any of the Kin or the darters or any other creature Leviathan had seen in the ocean.
And it is trying to communicate, Leviathan saw. At least it is repeating the message I showed to it. Mimicry? Not true intelligence but dumb mimicry?
The alien had gone dark. It glided through the waters between Leviathan and its replicant, silent, cold, and dark.
Suddenly its flank lit up. Brilliant red, shifting to orange and then green. The colors must mean something to it, but they were nothing but empty displays to Leviathan.
Then pictures began to form. Leviathan saw itself and its replicant displayed, with the alien between them.
Now the imagery showed an arm growing out of the alien’s curving hide. Thin and undulating, like the tentacles of the filmy beast Leviathan once encountered in the chill waters high above.
It’s trying to speak to us, the replicant signaled.
Leviathan flashed a swatch of yellow to show it agreed.
In the alien’s imagery the thin, flexible arm reached out from its own hide and touched Leviathan’s. There it remained, while pulses of color raced along the arm, running from Leviathan to the alien.
It wants to feed on us! the replicant signed, in agitated hot white.
Leviathan watched, fascinated and horrified, as the alien clearly showed that it wanted to attach a feeding arm to its hide and devour some of Leviathan’s flesh.
No! blazed the replicant.
Leviathan, too, felt the instinctive fear and revulsion. A part of its mind wondered why the alien seemed to be asking permission to feed off its flesh. Because it is so small and weak? Leviathan asked itself. The alien showed no teeth, no mouth parts at all. Its hide was smooth and hard.
And then a small mouthlike opening appeared in that hard smooth hi
de and a feeding arm began to emerge from it, snaking toward Leviathan.
Without another thought, Leviathan and its replicant both dived down toward the warmer, safer waters where the Kin dwelled in all their numbers.
* * *
“They’re going away!” Corvus yelped.
“Diving deeper,” said Dorn.
“Your probe scared them, Andy,” Deirdre said, feeling almost heartbroken with disappointment. “We were so close…”
Yeager simply shook his head and asked, “So what do we do now?”
Dorn replied, “Release the data capsule. And then go down after them.”
“Deeper?”
“Deeper.”
“How far down can we go?” Corvus asked.
“The ship’s designed for a thousand klicks,” Yeager replied. “Deeper than that and the pressure could become a problem.”
“A problem?” asked Deirdre.
“He means it could crush us,” Corvus said.
Deirdre looked at Yeager and saw that that was exactly what he meant.
Dorn’s hands were already playing across his controls. “Data capsule released,” he announced. “Following those leviathans now.”
Deirdre glanced at Andy, who was muttering unhappily as he reeled his DBS probe back into the hull. Her chest ached and she wondered how deep they could go before the pressure began to really hurt.
GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE
Katherine Westfall swept into the office without even a tap on the door. Red Devlin was hiding in the lavatory and Archer was on his feet, standing between his favorite armchair and the little serving table that held the phone console. He put down the handset and made a tight little bow to Mrs. Westfall.
“What have you to say for yourself?” she demanded.
Instead of the apprehension he’d felt only moments earlier, Archer barely suppressed a smile as he replied, “About what?”
Westfall blazed, “About the failure of the vessel you sent into the ocean! About the death of four volunteers aboard that vessel! About your criminal indifference to the danger you exposed them to!”
He let the smile show as he gestured to one of the armchairs. “Let’s talk this over calmly, shall we?”
“Four deaths,” Westfall said as she sat down on the edge of the chair. “Four murders.”
Sitting on the chair facing her, Archer said, “I just received a call from the mission control chief. The data capsule has shown up. It was a half hour late, but it’s in orbit around Jupiter now.”
Westfall’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She clamped it shut so tight that Archer heard the click of her teeth.
“Four murders,” Archer said coldly. “The question is, who tried to murder whom?”
“The capsule arrived in orbit?” she asked. “That means that…”
Archer said, “That means that they’re not dead. Something delayed their launch of the capsule, that’s all.”
“They could still be in trouble. Does the capsule say what’s happening down there?”
“Dr. Johansen and his people are looking at the data,” Archer said. “He’ll phone me with their preliminary findings in a few minutes.”
“I see.”
“If anything’s gone wrong with the mission … if the crew is in any kind of difficulty, Johansen will call me immediately, of course.”
“Of course,” Westfall said, in her little-girl whisper.
Almost casually, Archer asked, “Why did you assume they had died? Why did you assume the worst?”
Westfall blinked several times before replying, “When they failed to launch their data capsule on time, naturally I thought—”
“You thought they were dead.”
Her chin went up a notch. “Dead. Yes. That’s right.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“What do you mean by that?” Westfall snapped.
Archer turned toward the closed door of the lavatory. “Red,” he called. “Come on out here.”
For a moment nothing happened. Archer said to himself, He couldn’t have gotten out of the lav. There’s only the one door to the room.
Slowly the door slid back and Rodney Devlin stepped hesitantly into the office. Archer noticed that Red had cleaned himself up a bit. His spiky hair was brushed relatively smooth, his white outfit looked neater, if not cleaner. But the expression on his face was clearly uneasy, apprehensive.
Westfall stiffened for a moment, but she recovered enough to ask, “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“He’s the one who got the nanomachines for you,” said Archer.
With some of her old haughtiness, Westfall replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nanomachines,” Archer repeated. “Gobblers. Murder weapons.”
Fixing Devlin with a steely gaze, Westfall said, “I don’t know what this criminal may have told you, but he’s a born liar. Everyone knows that.”
Devlin pointed a finger at her as he said, “You told me you’d chuck me in jail if I didn’t get a sample of gobblers for you.”
“Which you wanted to feed to Deirdre Ambrose at the launch party, just before she left with the others on the mission,” Archer said to Westfall.
“I did no such thing!”
“I can get Franklin Torre to testify that he gave Devlin a sample of nanomachines.”
“What of it? That doesn’t prove that I asked him to do it,” Westfall countered. “This man is a known procurer, a smuggler, a thief, and a liar. No one in his right mind would take his word over mine.”
“That’s right,” Devlin said, clenching his hands in front of himself. “Nobody would take my word against yours. I knew that. That’s why I did what I did.”
“You obtained gobblers and fed them to Ms. Ambrose at the party,” Westfall said to Devlin.
“I got nanos, all right,” Devlin said. “But I fed ’em to you, not her.”
Westfall’s face went white.
“You’ve got those nanos in you right now, lady. You drank ’em down at the party.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You…” Suddenly Westfall launched herself at Devlin, screeching wildly, her clawed fingers seeking his face, his eyes. The Red Devil threw his arms up to defend himself, and Archer, startled by her fury, jumped out of his chair and wrapped his arms around her middle and dragged her away from Red.
“I’ll kill you!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you!”
Archer pushed her down onto one of the recliners. Westfall fell back onto it, her chest heaving, her face contorting wildly. Suddenly she burst into racking sobs.
“You’ve killed me,” she blubbered in her high, thin voice. “You’ve murdered me.”
FARADAY
“Your medical readouts are all within acceptable limits,” Dorn said, without taking his eyes from the data screens of his console. “How do you feel? Any problems?”
The cyborg was still standing at his post before the ship’s controls, his feet locked into the deck loops that kept him from drifting in the perfluorocarbon liquid. Yeager stood behind him, Corvus was at the console on his left. Deirdre looked up from the empty sensor screens toward Dorn’s control console.
She could see from the screen at Dorn’s right that they were diving deeper. The curve that showed the ocean’s pressure against the outer hull was rising steeply.
“How do you feel?” Dorn repeated.
Andy Corvus pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got a headache.”
“My back hurts,” said Yeager, clamping both hands just above his hips and arching his spine slightly.
Dorn said, “There’s nothing indicating physical problems on your data readouts.”
“It’s not serious,” Yeager said. “Just tension, most likely.”
Corvus turned toward Deirdre. “Dee, what about you?”
“I have a sort of tightness in my chest,” she answered.
“Maybe a massage would help.” Yeager leered.
“Oh, M
ax,” said Deirdre. She tried to scowl at him but couldn’t work up the mood.
“Internal pressure is rising as we descend deeper into the ocean,” Dorn said coolly. “Please report any increased discomfort immediately.”
“What about you, Dorn?” asked Deirdre. “How do you feel?”
The cyborg flexed his prosthetic arm. “A slight stiffness in my shoulder. I don’t think it’s related to the pressure increase.”
“You need a lube job,” Yeager joked.
Tapping the mission time line display with a finger of his human hand, Dorn said, “Feeding time for Deirdre and Max. Then sleep.”
Yeager’s usual leer reappeared on his beefy face. “I wonder if the two of us would fit in one of those sleeping slots.”
Smiling sweetly back at him, Deirdre said, “You’ll never know, Max.”
He grumbled but disengaged his feet from the deck loops and drifted over to the food dispenser. “Let’s see,” he muttered as he picked up the feeding hose, “I think I’ll have lamb chops, Caesar salad, and peach pie à la mode.”
Despite herself Deirdre chuckled at Max’s inanity. “Me, too,” she said. But she shuddered inwardly when Yeager offered the feeding hose to her.
“Ladies first,” he said, with a gallant little bow.
Trying to hide her revulsion, Deirdre plugged the hose into the feeding port at the base of her neck. Max turned his face away. He’s as grossed out by this as I am, Deirdre realized, but he’s too macho to admit it. Then she saw that Andy was staring at her, the expression on his strangely mismatched face a mixture of sadness and heart-melting compassion. My goodness, Deirdre thought, Andy looks as if he’s going to break down and cry.
* * *
As it dove deeper alongside its replicant, Leviathan wondered if they had run away too soon. Maybe we should go back, it signaled to the replicant.
And let it feed on us? came the reply.
Maybe it’s starving and needs to feed, Leviathan signed.
Not on us! the replicant signaled, in fierce blue.
