Gregory Benford - Jupiter Project

“That’s the whole trouble; the whole history of the human race has been one long unrepeatable experiment. Nobody’s ever going to figure us out. So we might as well try everything we can, even if it hurts a little, to see what doors it opens up.”

“Lecture over?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. I have a funny feeling you’re right. It feels right, anyway. Something has got to be wrong with a system that says Michelangelo shouldn’t have taken money to do the Sistine Chapel as long as everybody wasn’t eating prime beef.”

I nodded. The walls of the corridor were painted in a red spiral to give the feeling of depth, but at the moment the effect just made me a little dizzy. We came to Monitoring and Zak waved good-bye. I went in.

Dad looked up from his notes. Mr. Jablons was with him.

“Come on in, son. You’re just in time to see if your Faraday cup design holds up.”

There was a third man I vaguely recognized, wearing African robes.

“Matt, this is Dr. Kadin. He is the Laboratory Science Director.” Dr. Kadin bowed slightly and smiled. I remembered that he was Dad’s boss: in fact, he was the head of all the scientific research done in the Can and on Ganymede. I made the appropriate introductory noises while I tried to figure out why he was here.

“There are large storms brewing at Jupiter’s poles.” Dr. Kadin said to me. “Over the last few weeks I have been working with the astrophysicists to find an explanation. We have had little success. We do, however, think the storms may be throwing great swarms of electrons and other particles completely out of the Jovian atmosphere. Once above the ammonia cloud layer, they may become caught in Jupiter’s magnetic fields and funneled into the Van Allen belts. It is, of course, only a hypothesis.” He smiled again, showing incredibly white teeth.

“It’s a good thing you installed those new cups,” Mr. Jablons put in. “They’ll give us much better resolution of the electron concentration around Satellites Seventeen and Fourteen.”

“Because Seventeen and Fourteen pass close over the poles?” I said.

“Correct,” Dr. Kadin said precisely. “If your design can function under high particle flux, we may be able to record some highly significant data. There are some theoretical reasons to believe these particles originated deep in the Jovian atmosphere, perhaps deeper than we have ever been able to probe before.”

“When does it happen?” I said.

Dad glanced at a clock. “About now. I’ve been trying to reach you at home and down at the Student Center, with no luck. Thought you might want to watch. Satellite Seventeen should enter the polar region any moment.”

Dad thumbed the panel on his desk and his viewscreen began registering a readout from the Hole. The watch officer had set up a simple moving graph to show the particle flux that Satellite Seventeen was registering. The black line had already started a gradual climb. We all crowded around the screen, just about filling Dad’s office.

“That is an expected result,” Dr. Kadin said after a moment. He poked a finger at the rising line. “We can correlate this data with information from other equatorial satellites, to find the energy and other characteristics of the particles. The important point is how high this line can go.”

Mr. Jablons shuffled nervously. We waited, watching the line climb faster and faster. The only sound was a background whirr of air circulation.

The line rose, rose—and then dropped. It fell straight down to zero.

Dr. Kadin frowned. “It should not do that.”

We waited.

My face began to feel hot.

The line didn’t move.

“The Faraday cup may have shorted out,” Mr. Jablons said finally.

“Yes. It would seem so.” Dr. Kadin glanced at me, then looked quickly away. “Unfortunate.”

My father cleared his throat. “If the instrument has failed there is nothing to be done.”

“But it couldn’t fail!” I said.

“Quiet, son. Remember, Dr. Kadin, Satellite Fourteen crosses the same region above the pole in—” a look at the display screen—“three hours. We can get some data then.”

“Yes. Good.” He looked at me, not smiling. “The old Faraday cup would have given at least some information throughout the satellite’s passage over the pole. Hummm. Well—I shall return in three hours.”

With that he swept from the office, red robes fluttering.

Dad and Mr. Jablons tried to cheer me up but I wasn’t having any. We all knew that design worked. I must have installed it wrong. Maybe the job on Fourteen, with Jenny helping, was okay. Maybe.

One thing was clear; the radiation level in the Van Allen belts was rising fast. Dad made a note to advise the bridge and recommend that no men or craft be allowed outside the Can for the duration of the storm. I fooled around in the Hole, keeping tabs on Satellite Fourteen while it orbited up from the equator toward Jupiter’s north pole, toward the splotchy indigo storms.

After a while I took a break and wandered down to the Center. I was feeling pretty rotten. I ran into Jenny and she told me about a square dance that evening. That cheered me up; it would take my mind off everything that was going wrong with my life. Normally I dance as if someone was firing pistols at my feet, but with Jenny…

That’s when I got an idea. I looked around for an intercom phone and asked Jenny to wait a minute.

“Bridge.” a flat voice answered.

“This is Bohles. I’d like a provisional trajectory computed for rendezvous of shuttle Roadhog with Satellite Fourteen. Departure in, umm, two hours fifty minutes from now.”

“Well, okay, but we’re expecting to close down external operations any minute now. Background count is too high.”

“Transmit it to Roadhog ’s computer anyway, will you? I can clear the computer tomorrow if the program is invalidated.”

“Okay, if you just want to make work for yourself. I’ll beam it over in a couple of minutes.”

“Right, thanks.”

I hung up and went back to Jenny.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing.” I said. “Had lunch yet?” I kept my voice cool and casual. Inside I was tense, calculating, making plans.

“Yes, I ate earlier…” Jenny peered at me, looking puzzled. I avoided her eyes.

“Uh, okay, I… I think I’ll go get something.” I waved good-bye and moved off.

I got a snack. Then I went for a walk, alone. I didn’t really want to talk to Jenny, or anybody else. Things were boiling up in me, things I couldn’t explain.

I watched the faces in the curving corridors. Tight faces, sad ones. Frowns. Scowls. Distracted looks. Dazed expressions. People who seemed like they’d just come from a really terrible argument. Usually you see smiles. But now…

The spirit we once had was seeping away. I could feel it. We’d all been special out here. A pocket of light and air, bathed in hard radiation and unbearable cold. An outpost.

But now… They all knew we were going back. Crawling back home, defeated by the mysteries of Jupiter and the blindness of Earth…

Ignorant bastards, I thought moodily. People passing by glanced at me. I realized I must have said it out loud.

I leaned against a bulkhead, feeling suddenly dizzy. Christ, what was happening to me? I was wandering at random, talking to myself.

Things were moving too fast. Problems were coming up and nobody was solving them. Dr. Matonin went around with her oh-so-concerned smile, but that did no good. And Commander Aarons had already written off any chance of a kid staying here. The plain truth of the matter was that, to them, kids were just kids. In a tight situation, it was the adults who counted. Adults knew best. Kids only thought they had problems…try to tell an adult what was really eating at you, and you’d get the old chuckle and a nod of the head, and then a piece of warmed-over advice. They didn’t really see us as equals, as people, at all…