Jupiter's Reef (23 page)

1
Mary touched his arm. “I always wondered what your dad looked like,” she said, smiling.

Her voice was barely audible in the din of re-entry.

“I’ll have to talk to the engineers about the noise,” admitted Tony.

“DROGUE CHUTE DEPLOYED,” announced the computer. “BALLOON LAUNCH RECOMMENDED IN SIX MINUTES.”

“That computer voice isn’t the same,” complained Alex. “The old one was more ladylike. This one sounds like it has a cold. Talk to them about that too.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Sciarra.

“PREPARE FOR MANUAL INTERFACE. TEN SECONDS. DROGUE RELEASED”

Alex took the drive stick in one hand and touched the com with the other. The view screen slid down behind the console.

Alex felt
Diver
come to life in his hands, and a wave of relief swept over him. Behind him everyone was remarking about the vast, flat layer of russet cloud tops that percolated from various regions of the Great Red Spot.

Alex banked the ship to the left slightly, testing the controls.
Diver
’s left side dipped imperceptibly. Their air speed was still quite high but low enough so that the mild course change wouldn’t cause overheating. He righted the ship gently and pulled the nose up a bit.

“I have her, folks,” announced Alex.

“So you have, Captain,” said Johnny.

Everyone went into action. Alex scrutinized the numbers playing across the miniature screens on the dash. Mary called the
Cornwall
, announcing that they’d survived reentry.

Professor Baltadonis wasted no time activating the ship’s wide-field radar while Tony Sciarra attended to establishing a statistical baseline in the computer, as he said to Johnny. Alex was annoyed that the hum of
Diver
’s engines drowned out their low-voiced conversation for him. He didn’t want to tell them to speak up, but he was intrigued to have real scientists on the job.

No one had guided him then. He was a thief and an amateur who’d stumbled into the discovery of the Millennium. His reasons for believing in the reef were simply a hunch.

The media reporters on Earth had laughed when he told them that.

His eye caught Mary’s. She was looking at him sympathetically. In his mind he heard her clearly say; “Forget it, Alex. You have a ship to fly.” But her lips didn’t move.

“Alex, the radar is showing something about sixty kilometers below the clouds.” said Johnny. Alex knew from the muffled sound of the Professor’s voice that he was back under his virtual hood. “It’s a huge mass, only slightly more dense than the surrounding atmosphere. It’s showing some structure, too, a pinwheel shape almost like blades of a propeller?”

“What’s a propeller?” asked Mary.

“Rotary blades like a fan,” explained Johnny. “Sorry, I forget that you Martians don’t use helicopters.”

“Can I get a look at what you’re seeing?” asked Alex. “Can you switch the view to that virtual set-up you showed me back at Earth?”

“Command V,” said Tony. “Source, VRB. Just type it on your com.”

Alex eagerly reached for the keypad on the dash. Moments later a ghostly image surrounded him. He looked over at Mary. “I can’t really see anything, can you?” She shook her head.

“You’ll need to dim the cabin lights,” said Tony, sounding impatient. “Remember? And you can’t see the image with daylight streaming in. It’ll be much better in the dark.”

Alex dimmed the lights but found Tony was right,
Diver
was heading into the sun. However small the sun might have been from a billion kilometers away, it was nonetheless brilliant and spoiled the illusion. He squinted trying to make out what Johnny was describing, but the sunlight made it impossible. He switched off the virtual reality projector.

“Well,” said Alex. “I know it’s there. My radar showed it was a big Dinger. Something that big doesn’t just evaporate.” He shrugged and switched on the lights. “I don’t need to see it yet. It’ll be dark soon. Besides, it’s you and your friends on the Ganny ship that need convincing, right?”

“And we need samples,” said Johnny. “That’s why we’re going in.” Johnny raised the hood. He sat for a moment and watched the sun start to redden as it moved towards Jupiter’s strangely flat horizon. “It’s even bigger from down here,” he said. “This is frikkin’ amazing. Look at the horizon, it is so flat that it even seems to bow up at the edges.”

“Right. That’s an optical illusion,” said Tony. “The mind compensates for a curved horizon. Sees it as flat. So a
really
flat horizon looks bowed.”

Everyone looked at Tony. He talked as he tinkered with a gadget that he’d jury-rigged into his chair. Tony felt the eyes on him and looked up. “What?” he said.

Mary’s gaze returned to the window. Here and there, marching off toward the distant horizon, thunderheads punched their way into the cold heights to be smoothed and flattened. She watched their long brown shadows fan out from the sun. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “And it’s a fearful place.”

“What’s to fear?” asked Tony.

“Them,” said Mary. She flipped on the radio speakers.

Everyone recognized the clicking.

2
“Like listening to broadcasts from a city,” said Tony. “Bet it’s been heard before but nobody knew what it was.”

“It fades when you get far enough away,” said Mary. “We’re right on top of it.”

“Jupiter is a radio dynamo,” said Johnny. “I think Mary’s right. No way to discern these signals from the rest of Jupiter’s radio sources. Even after a hundred years of monitoring, the sources for whistlers, tweeters and all the other odd radio noises is still debated. But lightning accounts for most of it, I think.”

Mary switched off the speakers. Then she reached into a lapel pocket on her silver jumpsuit and pulled out her com tabs. Without hesitation, she put one on each temple, then she looked at Alex and smiled. “They work,” she said. “At least this time I won’t have to listen to their harping. Why do they pick on me?”

“That’s taking it a bit personally, don’t you think?” scoffed Tony.

Mary looked at him sternly. “I’d like that to be true,” she said with a sigh. “But ...”

Tony shrugged and turned back to his instruments.

Alex was going to speak up in Mary’s defense but decided to let events, rather than words, convince Tony. He recalled that during their close encounters with the clicker men it had taken him a while to believe that there was any link between Mary’s special skills and the clicker men’s radio chatter. That was before he realized that the clicker men had their own way of communicating to one another. It made sense that the citizens of Jupiter, like the citizens of Earth, might use a form of communication different from the rest of the creatures. Especially since the Reef was such a noisy place.

“What’s the word, Professor Baltadonis?” asked Alex. “Should we visit the reef?”

“First we have to establish a link with the
Cornwall
,” answered Johnny, his head back in his virtual bubble. “If we had the link, we lost it.”

“Not good,” said Tony. “I’m boosting the gain.”

Mary sighed and removed her tabs to assist in the search.

“You don’t have to, Mary, my love,” said Alex. “The ship’s radio is sensitive. It can do the job.”

“Alex, if I try I can hear Earth, okay? That’s why they made me this way. My sensitivity is greater than a ship’s. It’s my broadcast that lacks muscle.”

Alex looked at Tony who just rolled his eyes and put on a set of headphones. “We’ll get the link,” he said.

“I hear
Cornwall
’s carrier wave,” said Mary, touching the dimple on her temple where her com tabs normally sat. “But it’s fading. They’re beyond the rim. Going toward the other side. They have us locked in. Trying to establish two-way.”

“That agrees with their estimated position,” said Johnny. “The computer’s tracking them. The planet’s spin is greater than the
Cornwall
’s orbital velocity, so that means ...”

“that the computer will have to tell us when they’re in range,” said Alex with a laugh.

“I can tell you,” said Tony.

“You can calculate it in your head?” asked Alex, looking over his left shoulder at Tony. “Not bad.” Then he laughed. “Did you hear that, Johnny? We have a math wizard in our midst.”

“No big deal,” said Tony. “It’s just a knack. I see patterns in their numbers. It’s like music.”

Mary looked at Tony and smiled.

Alex pushed forward on the stick and the ship’s nose dipped toward the darkening clouds far below. “Night is coming and we’re using power to stay up and to reduce gravity,” he said. “I have us at one eighth gee.”

“We’re fine,” said Tony. “Power to spare.”

“I know,” said Alex. “Just bein’ thrifty, I guess.”

Tony gave Alex an appreciative smile then turned back to his instruments.

“What’s the plan, Johnny,” said Alex. “Drive around in the Great Red Spot for a while? It’s gettin’ dark out.”

“It’ll be light again in less than four hours. The Gannys will be above us in five. Meanwhile we could darken the cabin and watch the spot in infrared.”

Johnny suggested they proceed toward the center of the Spot. Alex was eager to comply.

“I’ve been looking forward to a little hi-tech,” he said as he pushed forward on the stick.
Diver
’s engines whined as their speed increased.

With the lights lowered so only soft green emergency lights illuminated the cabin floor, Johnny and Alex turned on the virtual projectors.

Nothing was visible at first. “Well, that’s a kick,” said Alex. “Am I missing something?”

“Patience,” said Professor Baltadonis as he pushed a button on the small panel attached to the hood that hung over his chair.

“The Spot by moonlight,” said Johnny. “In this case, Ganymede. I’ve boosted the ambient light by a factor of a thousand.”

They seemed to be floating a few miles above a vast tabletop of clouds. The scale of the scene that wrapped around them was mind numbing, to say the least. Everywhere, lightning pulsed beneath the clouds making them appear as a vast smoky landscape replete with mountain ranges, valleys, and even rivers. Beneath them, a canyon knifed into the clouds. Deep inside it, tiny threads of fire arced across the gap. “Dingers,” said Alex.

“Cool,” said Tony, coming out of his chair to get a better look.

Mary sat calmly and smiled. She stroked her kitten and looked around, then up. “Is that Ganymede?” she asked, pointing at a bright spot that floated in the hologram about ten degrees above eye level. The image ended a few degrees above it. The base of the illusion ended at about knee level. Mary’s kitten stared wide-eyed at the flashes around them, but it continued to purr, tucked safely between Mary’s legs. “This is amazing, Alex,” she said.

“You just won’t believe your eyes if we ever get deep in the reef,” said Alex. “And right off the bat, I can tell you this is going to be the best flying I’ve ever done.”

“You can tell this isn’t Earth,” said Tony. “It’s so flat.”

“Frightening, too,” observed Mary, with a shiver. Her eyes were sweeping the inky horizon. The stars blazed above them but vanished into blackness at the horizon. The Spot was a huge ocean of cloud below.

“Why can’t we see the horizon?” asked Mary, leaning back in her chair.

“Starlight can’t bounce that far, Mary” said Johnny. “Even when it’s amplified a thousand times. If you were on the hull it would be real dark out there. You’d see the lightning, of course.”

“And the stars and moons,” said Tony, looking up at the simulated sky.

“What’s the resolution of this image?” asked Alex.

“The white laze can push a thou per centimeter,” said Tony. He stood erect on the cabin floor next to the Professor’s magic chair. He flexed his legs. “It’s nice to feel a few gees again,” he said.

An air stream hit
Diver
across the bow and the ship dipped to the left. “You may want to strap back in, Sciarra,” said Alex.

“I’ll take my chances,” said Tony. “I’m not missing this show.”

“Suit yourself,” said Johnny. “But there’s winds out there that can flip us over. You see the Spot is a vortex, only it’s bigger than three Earths. Out there is only a few tenths of a percent of it all.”

That’s right,” said Alex. “Mary and I felt some breezes come out of those canyons. Didn’t they, Mary?”

Mary nodded and curled up in her chair.

Johnny continued. “I guess it’s out of those chasms that slipstreams of warm air rise from old Joe’s belly.”

“Old Joe’s belly?” said Alex. “Where did you get that?”

Johnny’s hollow voice fell silent. A moment later he shrugged and snickered. “A Ganny used it at the party. I like it. Makes the thing feel more homey. Old Joe.”

“Homey? It’ll never be homey,” said Mary. “Not for me, anyway.” She turned her face away from the scene.

“And we’re a piece of lint floating in Old Joe’s belly button, I guess,” said Alex.

“Good analogy, Alex,” said the muffled voice of Professor Baltadonis.

While the tiny piece of flotsam called
Diver
cruised at high speed across the face of the Spot, they all watched the cottony light show that unfolded below them. For a while they followed the crack in the clouds they called the canyon.

While they navigated the Spot, Johnny augmented the scene with radar imaging data. It laced through the scene like a great glowing cobweb, tracing successive layers, deep beneath the clouds.

“Wow?” shouted Alex. “Can you dig down to the reef?”

Johnny shook his head. “We will eventually. But there’s not nearly enough data in our computers, and the reef, if its where we think it is, is still a long way away.

Alex noticed Mary was in a fetal position, sideways in her chair, curled around her kitten. Her eyes stayed on the dark pool of fur in her lap.

“Is this too much for you, Mary?” he asked.

“I’ve never felt so much life,” she said softly.

“We were here only a few weeks ago, Mary. What’s changed?”

“Nothing,” said Mary. “Except they know us now.”

3
Alex switched on the radio. “You should put on your tabs, Mary. We won’t need the radio and if we do ... well, there’s the ship’s.”