“Egon!” Grant shouted. “We made it!”
“Yeah. You saved our butts, Grant.”
“Me?”
“Nobody else, kid. You got us out of there all by yourself.”
“But I only—”
The crack of hard heels on the floor tiles sounded like rifles firing. Several people were approaching, walking fast, impatiently.
The screen at the foot of Grant’s bed screeched back. Ellis Beech stood there, sullen anger clear on his dark face. A younger man stood slightly behind him, sallowfaced, thin pale blond hair. Like Beech, he wore a somber gray business suit.
But Grant stared at the other person standing with Beech: Tamiko Hideshi, dressed in a midnight-black silk floor-length robe with a high mandarin collar, her round face expressionless except for the smoldering resentment radiating from her almond eyes.
“I suppose you think you’re a hero,” said Beech.
Grant blinked at him, pulling his attention away from Tamiko. Then he remembered. The final two data capsules. The pair they had fired off Zheng He while the ship was straining to break free of Jupiter’s pull and establish itself in orbit.
“No,” Grant replied, shaking his head. “I just did the job that needed to be done.”
“You betrayed us!” Hideshi snapped.
“I shared new knowledge with the rest of the human race. How can that be a betrayal?”
In those frenzied moments when he didn’t know if the ship would make it or plunge back into Jupiter in a fiery death ride, Grant had programmed the capsules to broadcast their data on the widest bandwidth possible. He had remembered Dr. Wo’s words: Then we beam the information back to Earth. To the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, to the scientific offices of the United Nations, to all the news networks, to every university. Simultaneously. We make our announcement so loud, so wide, that it cannot possibly be overlooked or suppressed.
That’s what Grant had done: beamed every bit of data they had collected to every available antenna on Earth.
“There are three shiploads of news media people on their way to this station,” Beech said, almost snarling his words. “Every scientist in the solar system wants to come here, to study your godless whales, to make a mockery of the truth faith, to—”
“What makes you think the Jovians are godless?” Grant interrupted.
He spoke quietly, but his words stopped Beech in midsentence.
“Don’t you think that God created them, just as He created us?” Grant asked.
Beech glowered at him, speechless.
“When we were down in that ocean, crippled and sinking, I prayed to God for help. One of those creatures lifted us on its back and carried us upward. It answered my prayer.”
“That’s blasphemy,” hissed the young man behind Beech, his voice hollow, his eyes staring at Grant.
“No,” Grant replied. “God worked through that giant Jovian creature. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
Beech pointed at Grant with a long, accusing finger. “You will say nothing about this to anyone. You will not speak to any of the news reporters. You will be held incommunicado until we decide what to do with you.”
He turned on his heel and stamped away, followed by Hideshi and the slim young man, all of them walking in military lockstep.
Grant swung his legs off the bed and pulled back the partition separating him from Karlstad. Egon was sitting up in his bed, a palmcomp and headset resting on the sheets. He looked normal, no obvious signs of injury.
“Incommunicado,” Grant said. “I guess they’re pretty upset about what I did.”
Karlstad grinned at him. “If he thinks he can keep the reporters away from you, he’s living in dreamland.”
“You think so?”
Chuckling, Karlstad nodded. “You’re going to be the news media’s darling, kid. The brilliant young scientist who saved his fellow crew members deep in the boiling sea of Jupiter. It’ll be great!”
“Fellow crew members,” Grant repeated. “What happened to them? Zeb? Lane?”
“Lainie’s okay.”
“But she collapsed.”
“They haven’t found any permanent physical trauma. They’re keeping her in the women’s ward for observation.” He tapped a knuckle against the wall behind the head of his bed.
“And Zeb?”
Karlstad’s face turned more serious. “Bleeding in his lungs. Tissue must’ve been ruptured by the pressure.”
“Is he all right?”
“They stabilized him and shipped him to Selene. He should pull through, they think.”
“And what about Krebs?”
Egon laughed again. “That old bird’s too tough to keep down. She got a concussion from slamming into the bulkhead. She’s in the women’s ward, too, but she’s already busy helping Old Woeful to write reports back to the IAA.”
“How long have we been here?” Grant wondered.
“Three days. Like Christ rising from the sepulcher, you’ve come back to consciousness three days after going under.”
Grant frowned at Karlstad’s derisive impiety.
“For what it’s worth,” Egon continued, “neither of us suffered any major trauma, aside from having our hearing temporarily blotted out.”
Grant still heard that annoying metallic ringing echo to each word Karlstad spoke. Maybe my hearing is permanently damaged, he thought. That’s not so bad, considering what might have happened.
“If we’re okay, then why are they keeping us here?”
“Two reasons. The medics want to make sure we get a complete rest. And your friend Beech wants us kept away from the rest of the station personnel.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” Grant said.
“Tell that to your Mr. Beech. None of us is allowed to speak to the news media. By the time the reporters get here, Beech will probably have us shipped off the station. He wants us under wraps. Permanently.”
“But you said—”
“The reporters will find you, Grant. No matter where Beech puts you, they’ll ferret you out. Trust me, I know how they work.”
Grant sank back onto his upraised bed, thinking hard. They can’t keep the news secret. I blared it out to the whole world. But Beech and his team can punish us, all of us. He was furious with me, and he’s going to do his damnedest to prevent us from seeing the media in person. I hope Egon’s right. It’s not going to be easy for any of us, though.
He spent the rest of the day catching up on the messages that had accumulated. There were half a dozen from Marjorie and almost as many from his parents.
He stared at Marjorie’s face in the tiny screen of the palmcomp one of the nurses had lent him. She was smiling radiantly at him.
“I’m so proud of you, Grant,” Marjorie said in the headset’s earphone. “You’ve made an enormous discovery and you saved the lives of your crew…”
She’s acting as if I did it all by myself, Grant thought. He found that he didn’t mind that at all. In fact, he basked in the warmth of her smiling admiration.
“I love you, Grant darling,” his wife said. “And I miss you terribly. I hope you can come home soon. Sooner. Soonest.”
Grant adjusted the microphone of the palmcomp’s headset so close to his lips that they almost touched it, then whispered a long, rambling, heartfelt message to Marjorie, telling her how he yearned to be with her, how he would take the first vessel heading Earthward as soon as the authorities gave him permission to leave But when he tried to transmit the message, the screen glared: ACCESS TO UPLINK DENIED. NO OUTGOING MESSAGES PERMITTED.
Incommunicado. Maybe the news media would be able to get to him, once they arrived at the station, Grant thought, but probably Beech and his people will have moved us by then. It’s not going to be as easy as Egon thinks.