HOW ARE THEY? Grant asked.
ALL UNCONSCIOUS. ZEB BLEEDING INTERNALLY. KREBS CONCUSSION, MAYBE WORSE. LAINIE IN COMA, NO PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS I CAN DETECT GET US OUT OF HERE!!!
TRYING, Grant wrote.
WHAT ABOUT CAPSULES?
Grant thought it over swiftly, then typed, WAIT.
The seconds ticked by slowly as the ship rose, shuddering, buffeted by swift currents. Through the sensors Grant peered into unending darkness, broken only by an occasional glimmer of light so faint that it was gone when he turned his full attention to it. Luminescent creatures out there? he asked himself. Optical illusions? Or maybe just flickers of nerve impulses; maybe my brain cells are starting to break down in this pressure.
He felt the power of the thrusters as an animal roar in his mind, a mighty beast screaming in mingled strength and pain. Keep going, Grant pleaded silently to the thrusters. Only a few more minutes, not even half an hour. You can do it. Just keep on going. Yet the pain was growing worse. The thrusters were heading for catastrophic failure; the only question was how soon.
The view outside seemed to brighten somewhat. The utter darkness gave way grudgingly to a slightly lighter tone. Yes, it was definitely getting gray out there, Grant saw, like the sullen dawn of a midwinter morning.
He felt a pressure on his arm, turned to see Karlstad squeezing his shoulder.
GETTING OUT OF IT, Karlstad had typed on his screen.
Yes, Grant thought. If the thrusters hold up.
Definitely lighter outside. They were climbing through the murky haze of the region between Jupiter’s planet-wide sea and its hydrogen-helium atmosphere.
CAPSULES READY? Grant asked.
YES!!!
Grant touched his communications screen. Nothing. It remained dark inert.
YOUR COMM SCREEN WORKING? he asked Karlstad.
Egon tapped his screen and it lit up.
“This is Research Vessel Zheng He,” Grant said, even though he could not hear his own voice. He hoped the comm system could. “We are lifting up, out of Jupiter’s ocean, hoping to reach orbit and return to Research Station Gold. ”
On and on Grant talked, unable to hear a syllable of his own recitation, as the badly damaged submersible climbed into the clear air above the ocean, shaking and shrieking, rising on its plume of star-hot plasma toward the racing jet streams of Jupiter’s cloud deck. Karlstad stood silently by his console, fully linked to what remained of the ship’s systems now, unable to hear any of Grant’s long speech.
At last Grant finished. Zheng He was climbing through clear atmosphere now. Far off in the vast distance Grant could see a cluster of colorful balloonlike medusas floating placidly through the air.
He typed, SET CAPSULE TRANSMITTERS FOR WIDEST POSSIBLE FREQUENCIES—FULL SPECTRUM.
Karlstad looked puzzled. NOT NECE—
Grant slapped his hand away from his keyboard. DO IT, he insisted.
With a shrug, Karlstad did as Grant commanded.
READY TO GO, he typed.
RELEASE BOTH CAPSULES.
DONE.
The thrusters were close to failure now. Grant felt their pain flaming across his shoulders and down his back. The underside of the cloud deck was inching nearer, nearer. The graph on his one working screen showed that they had almost achieved orbital velocity, but if the thrusters failed while they were below the clouds or even in them, atmospheric drag would pull them down to a final, fiery plunge back into the ocean.
Lightning flashed across the underside of the clouds. Grant could hear through the ship’s microphones the rumble of thunder. The audio centers in my brain still function, he realized. It’s my ears that are damaged.
Winds began to buffet the ship. Doggedly Grant watched the tiny red blip on his screen crawling along the green curve. Almost there. Almost. Almost.
They plunged into the clouds, shaking and rattling. The thrusters’ pain was making Grant’s eyes blur.
Everything went dark. For a moment Grant thought the lights had gone down again, but then he realized he was giddy with pain, awash in agony. The view outside was black; they were in the clouds. Hold on! he commanded himself. Just a few more minutes. Hold on!
He couldn’t hear it, but he knew he was screaming. The thrusters were breaking down, whole chunks of their jet tubes ripping apart. The superconducting coils exploded, dumping all their pent-up energy into a blast that shredded the rear half of the ship’s outermost hull. Grant felt as if he were being flayed alive, his skin and the flesh beneath it torn away by the claws of a giant, vicious beast.
He squeezed his eyes shut. The pain disappeared, yet its memory echoed brutally. Every muscle in Grant’s body was sore, stiff, aching horribly.
He floated into near oblivion. Eyes still closed, he saw tiny bright unblinking points of stars scattered across the darkness.
Something, someone was shaking him. Opening his eyes, he saw it was Karlstad, floating beside him. Egon was laughing hysterically, although Grant could not hear anything at all.
Karlstad gesticulated, pointing to one of the screens on the unoccupied console on Grant’s right. It showed the same view Grant had seen when his eyes were shut: the view that the ship’s sensors were seeing.
The stars.
The serene black infinity of space. Off to one side, the curve of a mottled red-orange moon. Io, Grant realized. And then the massive flank of mighty Jupiter slid into view, wildly tinted clouds hurtling by far below them.
“We made it!” Karlstad mouthed.
Grant closed his eyes and saw the same view that the screen showed, only clearer, in sharper detail. We’ve made it, he realized. We’re in orbit.
BOOK V
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…
RETRIBUTION
The thin whine of a medical monitor woke Grant from a deep, dreamless sleep.
His first thought was, I can hear!
Opening his eyes, he saw he was in the infirmary, his bed screened off by thin plastic partitions. He ached from head to foot, but the pain that had throbbed behind his eyes for so long was gone now. His head felt clear, not even dizzy.
The memories came tumbling back, all in a rush. Climbing out of the ocean in the battered, barely functioning Zheng He. Achieving orbit. The frantic messages from the station, all displayed on his one working console screen because his hearing was still gone. Too hurt and exhausted to do more than float numbly in the bridge, Grant had engaged the ship’s automated rendezvous system to get them back to the station. It worked well enough for the controllers aboard the station to bring the ship in and dock it successfully.
They had rushed the whole crew to the infirmary. Grant remembered fuzzily Dr. Wo wheeling along beside him as a medical team hurried him through the station corridor, the director’s mouth moving in what must have been a thousand questions, but Grant unable to hear a word.
How long have I been here? he wondered. Lane, Zeb —Krebs. How are they? Did they make it? Did they survive?
Gingerly he pushed himself up to a sitting position. The bed adjusted automatically, rising to support his back. The tone of the medical monitors changed subtly.
“I can hear,” Grant said aloud. There was a faint ringing echo to his words, as if he were speaking them from inside an echoing metal pipe. “I’m alive,” he marveled, “and I can hear.”
“Me, too.”
It was Karlstad’s voice, from the other side of the partition on his left.