Gregory Benford: Jupiter Project

“Right. Watch out for—” Then I stopped. Better to tell him later, in private. “—his dink shot. It’s subtle. Our last game was a breathtakingly narrow twenty-one to thirteen.”

“I shall prepare,” Ishi said in a way that implied a lot. Ishi is always calm and it’s hard to read that politely expectant look he has. You have the feeling he’s sitting back, watching the circus around him with a slightly amused interest, unhurried, enjoying it all. He chuckles at things a lot and there’s a bemused twinkle in his eye when he talks.

“Why didn’t you challenge me?” Jenny said brightly to me. “I’m out of practice.”

“Why?” Zak said. “Working too hard?”

“My shuttle needs some repair.” Jenny said. “I’ve been overhauling it with the help of some people in maintenance.”

“Why should that take all your time?” I said.

“It is a long task,” Ishi said, “and it must be done as quickly as possible. There are only two shuttles assigned to satellite maintenance. That is the minimum number possible under the safety regulations, since there must always be a backup shuttle in case the first fails while on a mission.”

“Yours is still operating, Ishi?” Zak said.

“Yes. I have not been out, though. There have been no malfunctions among the data satellites while Jenny has had the Ballerina in the shop.”

“ Ballerina , is it?” I said. “I thought you’d named her Winged Victory. ”

“After that meteorite damage last month. I’m surprised you didn’t make it Victory Winged ,” Zak said.

Jenny wrinkled her nose at him and turned to me. “I like Ballerina better, and since I was sprucing her up—”

“Fine,” I said. “Be sure to change the entry in the Lab log, or twenty years from now a little man in a black suit will come around and ask you to cough up for a misplaced orbital shuttle.”

“I know enough to do that, ” Jenny said flatly. She straightened her braids again.

I remembered the sandwich I had made, and dug in. The bread wasn’t made from wheat, of course, but from a sort of half-breed seaweed that grows better in low-g hydroponics tanks. After nine years I’ve almost convinced myself I like the seaweed better. Almost.

Zak launched himself into a monologue about a poem be was writing, using terms I couldn’t follow. Zak is the local Resident Character, junior grade: he’s short, intense, and talks faster than most people can think. Faster than he can think, sometimes.

“Hey, Zak,” I said through a mouthful of sandwich, “have you thought about sending those poems back to Earth? You know—to build up a following?”

“Ah, sir,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “You reveal your abysmal ignorance of literary economics. Poetry, my friend, is unprofitable. It’s not worth the price of a ’gram to tightbeam it to Earth.”

“Ummm,” Jenny said, “that doesn’t sound like the Zak I know. Why write poetry if there’s no percentage in it?”

Zak looked shocked, and he was almost a good enough actor to be convincing. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “underneath this simple workshirt beats the heart of an artist. You—”

“Your heart is on the left-hand side,” Ishi said mildly.

“Oh. Yes. Jenny, you malign—”

“Spare us your sensitivity,” I said. “Anyway, Ishi, the human heart is in the middle of the chest. It only sounds like it’s beating on the left side.”

Jenny leaned across the table—which wasn’t hard, considering how small everything is in the rec room—and stared Zak in the eye. “Okay. Zak. I’ll accept the assumption that you have non-larcenous impulses, despite evidence to the contrary. But I’ve seen you scribbling away in a notebook, and there has got to be money in it somewhere. ’Fess up.”

“Oh, you mean my diary,” said Zak.

“ Diary? ” Even Ishi was surprised.

“Sure. I’ve been keeping one ever since I got here, seven years ago.” Zak looked around at us, surprised. “You mean you three don’t have diaries?”

We all shook our heads. “Why bother?” said Jenny.

“Thou art innocent of the profit motive? Well,” Zak said, shaking his head, “I hope you children have someone to lead you around by the hand when you get back to Earth.”

“What profit is there in a diary?” Ishi asked.

“Think about it,” Zak said, running his finger absentmindedly around the inside of his milkshake glass and then licking it. “Here we are six hundred million klicks away from Earth, orbiting the biggest planet in the system. The Lab is the farthest outpost of mankind. Don’t you think people back on Earth will read an account of life out here, written by—”

“A brilliant young poet?” finished Jenny.

Zak smiled. “Well I won’t say that. But you never know what a publisher will put in his advertising…”

I finished my coffee. “Say, Zak,” I said, “have you managed to tear yourself away from your diary to write that script for the skit you’re putting on? Deadline’s coming up.”

“Sure. Almost finished. I’m wondering if there are enough of us to fill all the roles, though.”

“Why not expand the cast?” Jenny said.

“Count me out.” I said. “I’m playing a guitar solo.”

“Spoilsport—say, here’s someone you can conscript now. Yuri.”

I turned, and Yuri Sagdaeff was sitting down next to me.

“What’s all the gab about?” Yuri demanded.

“Are you anything in the next amateur hour?” Jenny asked him.

“Nope. I don’t plan to.”

“I’ve got a part in my play that would fit you admirably, Yuri,” Zak said.

“Like I said, I don’t plan to. I haven’t got the time,” Yuri said, arranging the food he’d brought with him. He looked at me. “I don’t believe you have the time either, Bohles. Not if you’re going to ever play better squash.”

“I‘ll struggle along somehow,” I said.

“You seem suddenly quite interested in squash.” Ishi said. His face was a model of oriental inscrutability.

“I am.” Yuri said, taking a mouthful of peas. “I just didn’t get around to it before now.”

“You were big on chess two months ago, weren’t you, Yuri?” Jenny said.

“Sure.”

“I didn’t know that,” Zak said, “I’m a bit rusty, myself. Care to try a game, Yuri?”

“No. I don’t play chess anymore.”

“What? So soon?” Jenny said.

“You are a man of sudden interests,” Ishi said.

“Come on, Yuri, you needn’t be afraid of losing to me, ” Zak said.

“It’s not the losing. I’m just through with chess.”

“Umm.” Jenny said. “Did you finally get out of that trap Mr. Jablons had you in?”

Yuri smiled slightly. “Of course. And I checkmated him in three more moves. That gave me the championship of the Lab.”

“Verrry smart, Yuri,” Zak said. “Quit while the competition is still looking at your heels.”

“You’ve got me wrong,” Yuri said, waving a hand. “I just get bored with the same old thing, is all. Besides, I’ve got too much work to do. I can’t keep up with everything.”

“Your group is sending down more probes?” Ishi said.

Yuri nodded earnestly, glad to get the attention off himself. “We’re trying to get all the new data we can, in time to be sent back on the Argosy. ”

That’s what we were all working toward: the arrival of the Argosy, the mammoth ion rocket driven by nuclear power that was our only link with Earth, outside of laser beam. The economics of interplanetary travel are inescapable. It costs a fortune to push a pound of payload from Earth to Jupiter, struggling up out of the gravitational “hole” that the sun makes.