Gregory Benford - Jupiter Project

“Probably. Are you bringing it in?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll need a look at it anyway. A device that fails only when you need it isn’t much use. I’ll meet you at the lock and get right on the problem.”

“Fine.”

After some chatter about the radiation, which was rising again, I switched over to the bridge. They estimated that if the storm followed the same pattern as it had earlier, I wouldn’t get too much of a dosage.

It was a race to get me back to the Can as soon as possible. I was in the fastest possible orbit right now, so there wasn’t much to be done.

“Connect me with Zak Palonski, would you?” I said. While I waited, my headphones beeping and clicking, I reviewed what I’d been thinking about the last few hours. This wasn’t going to be easy to say.

“Matt? Boy, when you go overboard you do it in a big way.”

I grimaced. “Yeah. I—I went crazy back there, Zak. Once I got away from the Can and cooled off, I could see that. And why. It’s related to something you told me, once.”

“You mean about that fight back when you were a kid? And Yuri?”

“Right. I’ve gotten them all scrambled up, Zak. That eight-year-old Matt Bohles got so damned scared he was frantically glad to get away from Earth. I mean, I must’ve identified those bullies with the way all Earthside was going to be. I cried every night for weeks after that fight, you know.”

“So the little kid thought all the rest of life was going to be getting pushed around, bullied.”

“Yeah.” I smiled to myself, thinking back. “Yeah, I can still remember some of those feelings, now that I understand. When we got out to the Can it was—wow!—like being reborn. Everybody was nice. The bigger kids didn’t gang up on me.”

“You could be the smart guy without getting punished for showing off. You didn’t have to be a phony tough guy.”

“Yeah—say! How come you know all that?”

“Hell, you think you’re so different? We’re all kids from pretty highbrow families. We all had those fears.”

“Then why—?” I sputtered.

“I noticed some funny symptoms when Yuri started hassling you. I mean, I figured we kids were all over that stuff by now—but you didn’t seem to be. The way I see it, something about Yuri—his size, maybe—made you regress, go back to the behavior pattern you had in that Earthside playground. You couldn’t deal with him. You retreated into—”

“Dammit! Why didn’t you tell me? I—”

“I didn’t know. It was just a hunch. Young Freud, remember? I had to give you a chance to work it out yourself, even though I could see something was bothering you, and it was getting worse. Just telling you wouldn’t have worked either. You had to come on it yourself or it wouldn’t ring true. Remember when you had that dream on Ganymede and I started in on you?”

“Zak the head-shrinker, yeah.”

“You brushed me off.”

“Yeah.” I said quietly.

We were silent for a moment. I could hear Zak breathing into his mike. “Hey, look,” he said awkwardly. “What was it some philosopher said?—‘Self knowledge is usually bad news.’ But that’s not necessarily so.”

I nodded. “Right. Right. Now that I see it. I think I can deal with it. I’m scared of going Earthside. I like it out here. It’s safe. ” I laughed recklessly. “No schoolyards for the big kids to beat me up in.”

“I figure you’ll make it, Matt,” Zak said warmly. “I really do.”

“I’d better.” My sudden elation fizzled out. “Aarons will ship me Earthside for sure.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I went berserk. Zak. Crazy. Unstable. I swiped this shuttle, risked my life, broke regs, beat up Yuri… God, that felt good…”

“I see your point.” Zak said sadly. “ I know you’ll be okay now, but Aarons doesn’t have any choice.”

“Yeah,” I said. I looked down at Jupiter, endlessly spinning, and felt a bone-deep weariness. “I’m washed up, Zak. This time I’m really finished.”

“Matt?”

“Huh?” I felt drowsy. “Yes?”

“We’ve got trouble.” It was Dad.

“I’m only thirty-three minutes from ETA. What could—”

“That’s the point. We’ve just picked up a big flare on the south pole. Some extraordinary activity.”

“Meaning—?”

“Looks like a burst of high energy stuff, headed out along the magnetic field lines. The whole Jovian magnetosphere is alive with radio noise. And higher than the normal radiation flux, of course.”

“Will it catch me?”

“Looks like it.”

“Damn.” I bit my lip.

“Your fuel is—”

“I’ve already checked. Just enough to brake, maybe a fraction over.”

“I see.” A silence.

I frowned, calculating. I gave the idea about five seconds of solid thought, and then I knew: “Give me a new orbit, Dad. I’m firing along my present trajectory, as of—” I punched the stud—“now.”

A solid kick in the small of my back.

“Wait, Matt, we haven’t computed—”

“Doesn’t matter. Sooner I get going, the more seconds I’ll shave off my arrival time.”

“Well…yes.” Dad said slowly.

I held my thumb on the button, eyeing my fuel tank. Burn, baby. Go! But not too much—

I raised my thumb. The pressure at my back abruptly lifted. “What’s my mid-course correction?” I barked.

“We—we plot you into a delta-vee of zero point three seven at five minutes, forty-three seconds from now.” Dad’s voice was clipped and official. “Transmitting to your inboard on the signal.”

I heard the beep a second later. I was on my way. The new course correction would bring me into the Can with minimum time.

“How much did I pick up?”

“I make it seven, no, seven point four minutes.”

“That enough?”

“It’s close. Damned close.”

“Better than frying.”

“Yes, but…”

“Yeah. I know. What’s my reserve?”

“None.”

“What?”

“None. It will take just about every gram of fuel to get you to the top of the Can, instead of flying by at several klicks further out. You may have a few seconds of juice left at the bottom of the tank, but it can’t be more than a small fraction of what you need.”

“Geez.”

“Son. you’ll come into the top pancake.”

“With no brakes.”

“Right.”

“Damned magnetosphere. What’s causing all this, Dad? I mean—” I pounded my gloves on the steering column—“why in hell does the solar flux have to stack up on us just when Jupiter is throwing out this crap? What’s happening at the poles?”

“I don’t know. We’ve never seen—”

“I know that. But, but—” Then I shut up. I was just whining, and I knew it. The universe plays for keeps. It doesn’t give a damn if you’re a screwed-up kid who has gone off on a dumb stunt. Whining wouldn’t help.

The minutes crawled by I made the course correction and watched the Can grow from a bright dot into a slowly spinning target. I fidgeted. I planned. I talked to Dad, but there wasn’t much to say.

I had somewhere between zero and maybe ten seconds of burn time left. Not enough to slow me down much.

I climbed over the rig, detaching every unit and pouch and box that I could shove overboard. The less mass I had, the more braking I could get out of those few seconds of impulse.

I took the Faraday cup and put it in my carry-bag, tucked on the inside of my left leg so nothing could easily bump it. They’re mechanically pretty strong, anyway.

Then I looked at the stars for a moment, trying to think. I had to stay calm and I would have to move fast. I kept thinking that there had to be some way out of this.