“This isn’t my thesis, ma’am,” he said, totally missing her irony. “I’m setting up my fluid dynamics program to use the particle streams as tracers—you know, the way aerodynamicists use smoke particles in their wind tunnel tests.”
“You need your rest.”
“Yes’m. In a few minutes, please.”
Krebs watched him in silence for several seconds, then turned and floated back into the bridge. Grant was still working on the palmcomp when Muzorawa and Karlstad came in for their rest period.
“She wants you on duty,” Muzorawa said.
“In a minute,” Grant said. “I’m almost finished here.”
“Can I help?” Zeb asked, settling on the end of the bunk beside Grant.
“It would take longer to bring you up to speed than it will for me to finish this.”
Muzorawa laughed softly. “The cruel honesty of youth.”
Grant didn’t reply. He barely heard the older man. He hardly noticed when Muzorawa got up and went back to the bridge.
When at last he was finished and the program was running properly, Grant pushed himself up from the bunk and swam through the hatch. Muzorawa was at his console, fully linked up, with O’Hara beside him.
“Are you finished, Mr. Archer?” Krebs asked, dripping acid.
“Yes, ma’am. The program’s working fine now. Thank you for being so patient.”
“Thank Dr. Muzorawa; he is doing your work instead of enjoying his rest period.”
Grant fumbled with his optical fibers in his hurry to get linked. Zeb shot him an understanding smile.
“You have thoroughly messed up the work schedule, Archer,” growled Krebs. “I hope your inspiration improves the fluid dynamics program enough to compensate.”
Grant nodded, thinking, It does. It certainly does. But he knew enough to keep his mouth shut.
They passed seventy kilometers’ depth, following the spiraling flow of the organic particles, still diving deeper. Karlstad complained of a constant headache, O’Hara said she was starting to feel nagging pains in her arms and back, even Muzorawa said he was having some difficulty breathing. Grant’s own headache was still there, not much worse than earlier but certainly no better. Krebs said nothing, neither complaining about her own condition nor making the slightest comment on their gripes. She seemed utterly disdainful of their frailties; whenever she barked a command at him, Grant thought she was looking through him, not at him.
The ship creaked and groaned constantly now, making Grant wonder how deep they could safely go. He recalled that the ship’s design limit was ninety kilometers.
Ninety? Grant marveled. We’ve all got physical problems now, at seventy; how will we be when we’re twenty klicks deeper?
Still Krebs kept the ship descending.
“Do you realize where we’re heading?” O’Hara asked Grant during one of their reliefs.
He felt bone-tired; his throbbing headache was sapping his energy. Lane looked weary, too. She floated a few centimeters from the deck of their common area.
arms half bent before her.
“What do you mean?” he asked. What he really wanted was to crawl back into his berth and sleep for the four hours that were due him.
“The Spot,” Lane said.
That made Grant’s eyes snap wide. “The Great Red Spot?” His voice squeaked, even in the tone-deepening perfluorocarbon.
She nodded as she hooked a heel against the end of her bunk and forced herself down to a sitting position.
“We can’t be going into the Great Red Spot,” Grant said.
“That’s where the currents lead,” O’Hara said, “and we’re following the currents.”
“But she’ll turn off sooner or later.”
“She’s convinced that if there are creatures that eat those organics, they must follow the thickest streams of them. So we’re following the thickest stream and it flows into the Spot.”
“But she’ll veer off,” Grant repeated. “Before we get too close.”
O’Hara closed her eyes. “I suppose so. At the moment I don’t really care. All I want is a good sleep— and to wake up without this backache.”
Grant slid into his berth and fastened the mesh webbing that kept him from floating off the mattress while he was sleeping. It was like nestling into a cocoon, one of the few comforts on this mission. He fell asleep almost instantly.
And dreamed of being dragged into a never-ending whirlpool, crushed and drowned, his screams unheard, his pain unending.
TENACITY
“Approaching ninety kilometers,” said O’Hara, her voice edgy, tinged with strain.
Maximum design depth, Grant knew. He and Lane were on duty, Karlstad and Muzorawa in their berths. O’Hara looked tense, tired. She’s in pain, just like me, Grant thought. Like all of us. We’re all suffering. The pressure’s getting to us, physically and mentally.
“Level off at ninety,” said Krebs, “and maintain course.”
Continue following the stream of organics, Grant interpreted the order. Continue heading toward the Great Red Spot. At least we won’t go any deeper, he thought. We can’t. The ship can’t take it; neither can we.
There was still no sign of any Jovian creatures, great or small. The organic particles swirled and flowed through the great surging ocean, but there was no sign of creatures that fed on them. They had even driven all the way across the turbulent stream, the ship bucking and heaving as their instruments sucked in some of the particles for analysis.
“Jovian carbohydrates,” Karlstad announced, after testing the samples. “Good enough to eat—almost.”
But if the first mission had actually detected giant beasts deep down in the ocean, they certainly had not shown up here. Dr. Wo’s hypothesis that where there was food there must be eaters was proving to be nothing more than wishful thinking. Grant said to himself, Propter hoc ergo post hoc is just as fallacious as the other way around.
Although the fusion generator was performing well, as reliable as a tiny little star, the thrusters were showing signs of wear. Grant felt the erosion of their metal chambers as fatigue, a painful weariness in his bones atop the real pain and weariness of his true body. There was nothing he could do about it. All the diagnostics showed the metal was well within tolerable limits, it just felt so tiring to be linked with it, like being chained to an oar in an ancient galley. Grant thought about disconnecting from the thrusters and relying on the ordinary display screens of his console, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Krebs for permission to do so.
He was also monitoring the sensors on this shift, striving consciously to avoid being hypnotized by the constant swirling stream of the organics flowing through the ocean. It was fascinating, soothing, lulling him into forgetting about the thrusters and the headache that throbbed behind his eyes and—
What was that?
A flashing glint of something. At first Grant thought he had imagined it, but then he saw it again through the sensors’ multispectral cameras. Something glittering in the stream of organic particles, smaller than the organics, reflecting the light from the ship’s forward spotlights.
Without saying a word, Grant opened the ports for the samplers to suck in some of the particles. Most of them were the organics that they’d been following all this time, but these new things … he wondered what they could be.
The samplers scooped in a batch of particles and automatically fed them to the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer for analysis. The data flashed into his mind almost instantly. He saw graphs, diagrams, photomicrographs.
Carbon. Nothing but plain old carbon. Crystallized by the pressure, he saw. Then it hit him.