Gregory Benford - Jupiter Project

“And you have good no-g reflexes,” Dad said.

“I see.” I still didn’t like the idea of getting a job because Jenny put my name in. “But why so soon? Ishi’s job wasn’t all that urgent. Why do you need a replacement right away?”

“The storms,” Jenny said.

I looked over at her. It was the first sound she had made since I came in the room.

“Correct,” my father said. “They are coming more often now and they are more intense. The entire upper atmosphere of Jupiter, particularly near the poles, seems to be in turmoil. The satellites keep track of this; if they fail we’re left with nothing.”

“One is broadcasting intermittently right now,” Jenny said.

“And we must have one person on duty to repair them at all times,” Commander Aarons said.

I thought for a moment. Sure, it was dangerous. So was breathing, if you did it long enough. And Ishi hadn’t been afraid.

“Sounds reasonable to me,” I said. I’ll be glad to switch over from Monitoring, if you need me.”

“Ah. Good.” Commander Aarons stood up. “Best of luck.” He shook my hand. It gave me a warm friendly feeling.

When we were out of the office and Dad had gone back to Monitoring I turned to Jenny and said, “Was this your idea?”

“Mine? Don’t be silly. Commander Aarons called me in just a few minutes before you. He wanted to know if I would mind working with you.”

“Okay. Sorry. I guess I’m just a little edgy today. The last twenty-four hours hasn’t done me a whole lot of good.”

Jenny looked sad. “I know what you mean.”

We walked down to the student rec center to get something to eat. We had to stand in line.

“I think we ought to go down to the main bay and begin going over your shuttle,” Jenny said.

“Huh?”

“Well, you’re going to have to learn how to operate it sometime. I know you’ve done some simple piloting, but—”

“You mean you’re supposed to teach me?”

“Who else?”

“Well…”

“Say, is there some reason you don’t want to work with me?”

“Uh, no,” I lied.

In the back of my mind I was thinking about Zak’s theory about what living so close together in the Can had done to us. It felt right. Jenny was like the rest of the girls I knew. Buddies, I guess you’d say. I could see she was pretty and smart and reliable, sure. And I’d been thinking of her that way for as long as I could remember. But now I wanted something else.

Something had started me thinking. Maybe it had been Zak and his comical Rebecca and Isaac, lurching around and pounding away at each other. I felt like a dummy, a goody-goody boy stuck out here around Jupiter, while back on Earth a guy my age knew about women and how to treat them. Well, that was going to change. But until I could figure out how to do that, I didn’t want to be all palsy with Jenny. Not when I could maybe be something more…

“Hey, are you paying attention?” she said.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Look, let’s get this training over with, huh?”

She looked at me curiously. “You seem a little nervous about something, Matt.”

“Naw, I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

Jenny shrugged.

“It could not be because you are afraid, of course,” a deep voice said.

I turned Yuri had filled in the line behind us.

“Get away, Sagdaeff,” I said.

“Don’t be silly, Yuri.” Jenny said. “Matt isn’t afraid.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. He did not react very well under stress on Ganymede.”

“How would you like a flat nose?” I said.

“Ah ha, threatening violence. The last resort of the incompetent. I wonder what Commander Aarons would think if you were to hit me in public?”

“Let’s find out,” I said, raising my arms.

“Yuri! Matt! Stop it. Yuri, go away. You started it.”

“I merely came over to congratulate Matt on his new position.”

“How did you know?” I said.

“Rumors, rumors. And I happened to be talking to the Commander’s secretary when she was typing up the change of status report.” Yuri smiled coldly at me.

Jenny said, “Yuri…”

“All right. I am leaving.” He walked away.

“What was that all about?” Jenny said. “Did it have anything to do with what Commander Aarons said?”

So I told her about Ganymede and the air hose. It was already getting to be an old story.

“I see,” Jenny said, thoughtfully chewing a sandwich. (By this time we had been through the line.) “That explains a lot of Yuri’s behavior.”

“It does?”

“Of course. Look.” she said, tossing her head to get some brown curls out of her eyes, “it must have been a hard thing for Yuri to have to admit to himself that he made a big mistake with the air hose. It hurt him.”

“Hurt his ego, you mean. It makes a big target.”

“All right, it damaged his self-image. He is miffed. And he’s taking it out on you.”

“Why me? I saved him.”

“You saw him make the mistake, too.”

“This sounds pretty twisted to me.”

“Maybe it is, but some thing must be making him act this way,”

“Let’s make a deal.” I said, patting her hand. “You don’t psychoanalyze me and I promise not to run berserk. Okay?” I decided not to go into Zak’s theory about Yuri, even though I was sure it was true. What could be gained?

“I didn’t know you were about to.”

“Well, I might if people keep giving me advice. Come on, let’s get to work. Is the Ballerina ready?”

She got up, straightening her red blouse, and said, “Yes, but that’s not the shuttle we’ll be using to train you.”

“Oh? Ishi’s then. What’s its name?”

“He never gave it one.” she said as we left the cafeteria. “It was entered in the log by its inventory number.”

“I’ll name it myself, then.”

“What?”

“ Roadhog, ” I said.

We suited up and cycled through the Can’s main lock. The vehicle bay is just outside the lock, but the bay isn’t a particular room you can point at—it’s simply the big open space in the hollow part of the Can. All the small-sized vehicles are kept there and secured at the axis with a network of elastic tie-lines, to be sure they don’t bang into each other. All along the inner face of the Can are slots for berthing; when a vehicle needs to be fueled or worked over, it’s pulled into a berth. Otherwise it’s moored a good distance from the Can’s skin, in high vacuum that does it no harm.

Jenny and I clipped on to the mooring lines and pushed off. After a moment of coasting I turned so my feet pointed toward the shuttle and squirted my attitude jets. That slowed me to a crawl and I unclipped from the line just as the shuttle swelled up to block my view of the opposite inner wall of the Can. I landed, catlike.

I swung around, found a pipe and attached my own suit tie-line to it. The shuttles are all different: each one was thrown together with whatever spare parts came to hand. The Roadhog —I’d silently christened it the moment my glove touched the pipe—looked like a conglomerate of castoffs until you studied the structure.

It was a bit like an automobile chassis, all bones and no skin. The pilot was belted into a couch at the center. He was surrounded by pipes and struts and fuel tanks, without having his view obscured. A small yellow ion-engine was mounted behind him. The whole thing was lumpy but balanced; spacecraft have to be stable.

I glided over to the pilot’s couch and perched on top of the backrest. Around us, never closer than twenty yards, were other craft. A few had their running lights on; they were being checked over or preparing to go out. A big tube-shaped cargo hauler was moored right above us. Beyond that the gray water-shield plugged the bore of the Can. Below I could see someone using a cutting torch, its flame a sharp, fierce blue diamond.