Leviathan had a tale to portray to them.
Karlstad nodded as if satisfied, then cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Krebs still appeared to be sleeping, floating in an almost fetal position up by the overhead.
Grant dared not ask the question, but Karlstad grinned at him and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger. He's gotten into the station's medical files, Grant understood. Despite his better judgment, he wondered what Krebs' file said about her.
With a blink of his eyes, Grant returned his attention to the ship's sensors. The generator and thrusters were performing so close to their design optima that Grant could almost forget about them, relegate them to a corner of his mind, a background hum of power buzzing along his nervous system. The sensors were something else, though: he could see through the murky alien atmosphere as if it were a cloudy, hazy day on Earth.
Off in the distance Grant saw a swirling snowstorm, a blizzard of white particles falling thickly into the sea. They're not really white, he reminded himself. You're seeing them in false color. Actually they're dark, sooty with carbon compounds; the manna that makes Dr Wo think there must be living creatures in the sea, feeding off this bountiful abundance of organic particles. Wo's reasoning is more wishful thinking than logic, Grant told himself. Just because there are organic particles raining - or rather, snowing — into the ocean doesn't mean there have to be creatures in the sea to eat them. That's a classic fallacy.
They were getting closer to the blizzard. Hardly thinking consciously about it, Grant imaged the ship's planned course as a slim bright yellow line against the view of the blizzard. We'll pass by it, miss it by more than four hundred kilometers. He felt glad of that; he had no desire to ride through another storm. Yet, at a deeper level, he felt disappointment.
And curiosity. Why are the particles concentrated so thickly there, and not falling anywhere else in sight? If the organics form in the clouds, why isn't there a steady drizzle of them everywhere? It must be that they only form in special places up in the clouds; the processes that create the organics aren't spread evenly throughout the entire cloud deck. I'll have to ask Egon about that. If there are creatures in the ocean that eat those organics, we're most likely to find them under the storms that produce their food.
The pressure outside was rising steadily as the atmosphere thickened into liquid. Grant could feel long, billowing surges of waves now, ripples and cross currents racing through the ammonia-laced water. Riding through this ocean won't be easy, he realized. There's a tremendous amount of power in these waves.
By the time Lane and Zeb returned to the bridge, Krebs was fully awake and snapping commands. Sonar pings were bouncing back to the receivers, reflecting off layers of true liquid now. Grant handed over the sensors to Muzorawa reluctantly. Zeb's going to be connected to them when we actually get into the ocean, he told himself, feeling jealous.
O'Hara started to call out altitude numbers. 'Ten thousand meters to the reflecting layer. Sink rate nominal.'
'Be quiet!' Krebs said. 'I can see the data perfectly well.'
She sounded testier than usual to Grant. She's just as clanked up about entering the ocean as I am, Grant thought.
'Thrusters to one-third power,' Krebs ordered.
Grant cut back thruster power. He had to look up at the main screen to see outside now. There were waves out there, restless, ceaseless swells, almost close enough to touch. They were reaching for the ship, heaving angrily, surging higher and higher.
Grant wormed his feet deeper into the floor loops and grasped the hand grips on the front of his console. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Krebs was holding onto a handgrip set into the overhead with one hand, dangling like a thickset monkey.
Lower they sank, deeper into those long, powerful swells. Grant could hear his pulse thudding in his ears. Muzorawa looked tense, his hands squeezing on the console grips, making the muscles in his forearms ripple.
Grant turned toward O'Hara, but Krebs shouted, 'Left five degrees!'
Looking up at the wallscreen Grant saw a raging current surging straight for them, blood-red in the sonar system's false-color imagery, filling the screen.
'Full power on the thrusters!' Krebs snapped.
Impact! The ship slammed into the current as if hitting a mountainside. One of Grant's floor loops tore free and for a moment he lost contact with the thrusters. He stared down at his console, but the ship was shaking so badly the screens were little more than a blur. Then he felt the thrusters again, surging powerfully, singing their mighty song. Grant smiled inwardly as the thrusters drove the ship below the current's powerful stream, down deep beneath its shearing force.
The shaking eased. The turbulence dwindled away. They were truly in the ocean now, safely beneath the turbulence, down where the currents flowed swiftly and smoothly - most of the time.
'Thrusters to half power,' Krebs said, almost gently.
'We're in the ocean,' said Karlstad, almost as if he couldn't believe it.
'Obvious but true,' O'Hara replied.
'Stop the chatter,' Krebs growled. 'Check all systems.'
Grant found that the generator was performing perfectly well, and so were the thrusters. The only damage he could find was the foot restraint that had torn loose.
'The forward infrared camera is not functioning,' Muzorawa reported. 'It must have been damaged on impact.'
'Repair or replace,' Krebs said flatly.
Muzorawa nodded. 'I'm running a diagnostic now, Captain. If the damage is too severe to be repaired, I'll go to the backup.'
O'Hara reported no major problems with the ship's maneuvering systems, although one of the steering vanes had unfolded only partway. The ship had six steering vanes and two backups. Krebs ordered O'Hara to deploy one of the backups and fold the stubborn vane back into the hull.
'Life support?' Krebs asked.
Karlstad said loftily, 'All my systems are functioning nominally, Captain. No problems.'
Before Krebs could comment on that, Lane said worriedly, 'Captain, I can't get the vane back. It's stuck in the half-open position.'
Krebs scowled at her. 'Fold the vane on the opposite side of the ship to the same angle and freeze it there. Deploy both backups for maneuvering.'
O'Hara nodded.
'Anything else?' the captain asked.
None of the crew had any other problems to report.
'Very well,' Krebs said. 'Take a half-hour break. But no sleeping! I want you awake and alert in case I need you.'
They all disconnected and drifted back toward the food dispenser. Karlstad got there first and grabbed one of the feeding tubes. Grant let O'Hara go ahead of him.
'Going to be a gentleman, are you?' she teased.
Grant muttered, 'Uh, yes, I guess so.'
'Thank you, then,' Lane said, taking the other tube.
It still bothered Grant to see her plug the tube into the socket in her neck. He felt a slight ache in his shoulders. Tension, he guessed.
Turning to Muzorawa, bobbing gently beside him, Grant said, 'So we're in the ocean.' It was idle chatter and he knew it.
The captain handled the entry very well,' Zeb said, his voice low. 'When we hit the Jetstream on the first mission, half the ship's power went out.'
'How could that be?' Grant blurted. 'It's all solid state.'
'The generator isn't solid state,' Muzorawa countered. 'One of the deuterium feed lines was knocked loose. We had a devil of a time repairing it.'
Grant was suddenly aghast. 'The radiation…'
Muzorawa smiled gently. 'The best thing about fusion generators, my friend, is that the radiation is all contained inside the reaction chamber. The deuterium and helium-three that feed into the chamber are not radioactive.'
'Oh,' Grant said, stretching his arms as far as he could in the cramped corner by the dispenser.
'Are you hurt?' O'Hara asked.
'No, just a pain across my shoulders. It'll go away.'
'I've got a headache,' she said, 'if that makes you feel any better.'
'Me too,' said Karlstad. Turning to Muzorawa, 'What about you, Zeb? Any complaints?'
The Sudanese said nothing for a moment. Then, 'We will all have aches and pains, and they will grow worse as the mission continues.'
'That's comforting,' Karlstad huffed.
'I believe part of it comes from being linked. We feel the ship's systems as our own bodily sensations.'
Grant nodded.
'And as the systems wear down,' Muzorawa went on, 'we will feel their pain.'
'Yes, I remember,' O'Hara said, nodding.
'So we've got more and more pain to look forward to,' Karlstad grumbled.
'Yes.'
'It's not that bad,' said O'Hara. 'It can be handled, really.'
Muzorawa smiled knowingly. 'The ship's machinery may break down, but we will not. Machines have no spirit, no courage, no drive to succeed no matter what the cost.'
'Maybe you feel that way,' said Karlstad. 'I certainly don't.'
'Yes you do, Egon,' O'Hara contradicted. 'You just don't want to admit it. Not even to yourself
Karlstad looked uncomfortable for a few seconds. Then he turned to Grant. 'Which reminds me,' he whispered. 'After this delicious repast, we should take a peek at the medical report.'
Grant couldn't help turning to look at Krebs, floating in the middle of the bridge, linked to the entire ship. He couldn't see her face, but her limbs looked relaxed, as if she were floating in the sun-warmed waters off some tranquil tropical beach.
Muzorawa looked puzzled. Grant explained, 'Egon queried the station's medical computer about the captain.'
Muzorawa's expression flashed to disapproval, almost anger. 'That was not wise, my friend.'
Pulling the tube from his neck, Karlstad replied, 'Let's see what we've got.'
He ducked through the hatch to their sleeping quarters, with Muzorawa close behind him.
'Wait for me,' O'Hara hissed.
Grant said, 'Finish your meal, Lane. You won't miss anything.'
Zeb and Egon were sitting together on the end of Karlstad's berth, hunched over his palmcomp. Grant floated up to the overhead and held himself there with a hand against the metal ceiling.
'You actually hacked into Dr Krebs' personal medical file?' Muzorawa whispered.
Karlstad nodded. 'I'm the life support specialist on this mission, remember. Rank hath its privileges.'
They dared not put the file on the wallscreen of their common area; Krebs could tap into that through the ship's main computer. So Grant squinted at the tiny, green-glowing display of Karlstad's palmcomp, hardly aware that O'Hara floated in and joined him up by the ceiling without saying a word.
'I don't see anything unusual here,' Muzorawa muttered.
O'Hara whispered, 'This is prying into her personal affairs. It's an invasion of her privacy, Egon.'
His head still bent over the palmcomp, Karlstad answered, 'She could get us all killed, Laynie. That supersedes her right to privacy, as far as I'm concerned.'
'But her medical report is fine,' Muzorawa said. 'She's fully recovered from her injuries from the first mission. "Fit for duty." It says so right there.' He pointed to the glowing green screen.
'Wait,' Karlstad whispered impatiently. 'Here's the psychology material.'
'It's normal.'
'Boringly normal,' Karlstad agreed, sounding disappointed. 'It's almost as if- hold it! What's this?'
Grant saw the words buried in a paragraph so filled with jargon it was barely understandable:
as a result of these physical trauma, the subject is afflicted with moderate visual agnosia
.
'Visual agnosia?' Grant asked aloud, 'What's that?'
'Keep your voice down!' Karlstad snapped,
'But what is it?' O'Hara echoed.
'I don't know. I'll have to look it up.'
Muzorawa said, 'You can't access the ship's references without the risk of the captain finding out what you're doing.'
'And you can't query the station's computer again,' Grant added.
'Why not?' Karlstad demanded.
'Because you'll get caught!'
Karlstad shut down his palmcomp. Grant pushed down from the overhead and settled on the deck, followed by O'Hara.
'Listen to me,' Karlstad whispered urgently. 'We may have a crazy woman running this ship. We ought to know what this condition of hers is all about. We have that right!'
Muzorawa said, 'It doesn't matter. Now that we are in the ocean we are truly out of contact with the station.'
'Unless we trail out the antenna,' said O'Hara. 'It's five kilometers long. At our present cruising depth we could use it to contact the station.'
'Krebs would find out,' Grant warned.
'Not if we do it when she's asleep,' countered Karlstad.
'If she goes to sleep before we start descending deeper,' O'Hara said.
'Lane, do you agree with Egon?' Muzorawa asked.
She frowned, trying to put her emotions into words. 'I'm not certain. She does behave peculiarly, don't you think?'
Grant wanted to argue against it, but instead he asked
Muzorawa, 'Zeb, what do you think? Should we take the chance and query the station's medical computer again?'
For a long moment Muzorawa remained silent, obviously weighing the pros and cons of the matter. At last he said gravely, 'Yes, I'm afraid we must take the risk. The psychologists may have reported her fit for duty, but the stresses of the mission might aggravate her condition — whatever it is.'
'We have a right to know,' Karlstad repeated.
'Yes,' Muzorawa agreed. 'Probably it's nothing and we are being foolish. But we should know, even if for no other reason than our own peace of mind.'
Grant suddenly got a different idea. 'We could ask her,' he blurted out.
'What?'
'Ask her about her condition,' Grant said.
Karlstad groaned at the thought. Muzorawa shook his head. O'Hara said, 'I don't think that would be the thing to do, not at all.'
Back on duty, Grant kept one eye on O'Hara's navigation plot.
Zheng He
was cruising fifteen hundred meters beneath the point where the atmospheric density equaled the density of water on Earth's surface. The communications antenna was more than three times longer. As long as Krebs didn't order them to go deeper, they could unspool the fiber-optic cable and contact the station.