Ben Bova: Jupiter

Suddenly Grant felt trapped in the wardroom, alone with her.

“I, uh …” He started to push himself up from his chair. “I still have a lot of studying to do. And I need to send a videogram to my wife. I send her a ’gram every day, and—”

The captain burst into a peal of hearty laughter. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I understand, handsome young bright-boy. Not to worry.”

She laughed and headed for the coffeemaker. “As long as the VR system works, you are perfectly safe, pretty one.”

Grant sank back into his chair as she filled her mug, still laughing, and went back to the hatch.

Then she stopped and turned back toward him. “By the way, there’s an observation blister just off the bridge. If you want to see Jupiter with your naked eyes, you have my permission to use it.”

Grant blinked with surprise. “Um … thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much. I’m sorry if I—”

But the captain had already turned and started down the passageway toward the bridge, still chuckling to herself.

For long moments Grant sat there alone, wondering if he’d misunderstood the captain and made a fool of himself. But she’d mentioned a virtual reality system. Grant had heard about using VR simulations for sex. That’s what she’d meant, he was certain.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss the encounter from his mind. Me, with her? He shuddered at the thought. But immediately he started composing another video message for Marjorie, mentioning nothing about the captain, of course. And, despite himself, wondering what VR sex might be like.

Peering through the transparent glassteel of the observation bubble, Grant could see that Jupiter was not merely immense, it was alive.

They were in orbit around the planet now, and its giant curving bulk loomed so huge that he could see nothing else, nothing but the bands and swirls of clouds that raced fiercely across Jupiter’s face. The clouds shifted and flowed before his eyes, spun into eddies the size of Asia, moved and throbbed and pulsed like living creatures. Lightning flashed down there, sudden explosions of light that flickered back and forth across the clouds, like signaling lamps.

There was life beneath those clouds, Grant knew. Huge balloonlike creatures called Clarke’s Medusas that drifted in the hurricane-force winds surging across the planet. Birds that have never seen land, living out their entire lives aloft. Gossamer spider-kites that trapped microscopic spores. Particles of long-chain carbon molecules that form in the clouds and sift downward, toward the global ocean below.

Unbidden, the words of a psalm sang in his mind:

The heavens proclaim the glory of God;

And the firmament declareth the work of his hands…

And there was the Red Spot, a gigantic swirling storm that had been raging for more than four hundred years, bigger than the whole planet Earth. Lightning rippled endlessly around its perimeter; to Grant it looked like the thrashing cilia of some titanic bacterium, flailing its way across the face of the giant planet.

Somewhere in a closer equatorial orbit around the planet was Research Station Gold, Grant’s destination, the largest man-made object in the solar system outside of the space cities orbiting between Earth and its Moon. But Gold was an invisible speck against the enormous, overwhelming expanse of Jupiter.

It’s like watching an abstract painting, Grant thought as he stared at the hurtling clouds of delicate pale yellow, russet brown, white and pink and powder blue. But it’s a dynamic painting, moving, shifting, flecked with lightning—alive.

Mars was a dead world, cold and silent despite its lichen and ancient cliffside ruins. Venus was an oven: sluggish, suffocating, useless. Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, nearby moons of Jupiter almost the size of the planet Mercury, bore fragile ecologies of microscopic creatures beneath their perpetual mantles of ice.

But to Grant’s awestruck eyes, Jupiter looked vibrant, powerful, teeming with energy.

For the past four days the captain had been gradually increasing the ship’s spin, so that now it was revolving around its empty cargo bay fast enough to produce almost a full terrestrial gravity force in the habitation module. After almost a year at one-half g, the increased sense of weight made Grant feel tired, aching, dispirited.

Except when he was in the observation bubble. Sitting there in its lone padded chair, staring out at the immensity of Jupiter, Grant’s mind raced as fast as the swirling multihued clouds. He had no idea of what his assignment would be once they made rendezvous with Gold Certainly the International Astronautical Authority had not paid for his transportation all the way out to Jupiter to have Grant study pulsars and black holes, as he would have preferred to do.

No, he thought, still staring in fascination at Jupiter, the IAA’s main thrust out here in the Jovian system was with the microscopic life-forms on frozen Europa and Callisto and the creatures living in Jupiter’s atmosphere. They should be bringing biologists and geologists for that kind of work, not a frustrated astrophysicist.

Yet the New Morality claimed that the scientists had sent a manned craft into Jupiter’s swirling clouds. In secret. Was it true? What did they find? Why would they keep such work a secret? Scientists don’t behave that way, Grant told himself. Somebody in the New Morality is paranoid, and I’ve got to spend four years of my life paying for his stupid suspicions.

With growing despair, he realized that the scientists would probably put him to work running an ice-drilling rig on the surface of a Jovian moon. Or worse, he’d be sent down under the ice into the frigid ocean below. That thought frightened him: sent under the ice, into an alien ocean, a world of darkness with no air to breathe except what the tanks on his back carried. Scary. Terrifying.

“Rendezvous maneuver begins in three minutes,” the captain’s voice said from the speaker grille set into the bulkhead, sounding slightly scratchy and flat. “All nonessential personnel will confine themselves to their quarters or the galley.”

“Nonessential personnel,” Grant muttered, hauling himself up from the padded chair. “That means me.” And Tavalera, he added silently. His body felt heavy, sluggish, in the full Earthly gravity.

For a long moment he stood in the cramped little blister of the observation bubble, ignoring the ache in his legs, still staring at Jupiter. It was hard to pull his eyes away from its splendor. The research station was still nowhere in sight; or, if it was, it was too small against Jupiter’s massive bulk for Grant to notice it. With enormous reluctance, he turned and ducked through the low hatch and stepped out into the passageway that led to the galley.

Tavalera was in the galley, sure enough, sitting at the table with a steaming mug in front of him and an embarrassed expression on his horsy face. He was wiping his chin with a recyclable napkin. Grant saw that the front of his coveralls was stained and wet.

“Be careful drinking,” Tavalera warned. “Liquid pours a lot faster now we’re in a full gee.”

Grant thought he didn’t need the warning. His aching legs told him all he needed to know about the gravity. He thumped heavily into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Tavalera.

“Guess this is our last day together,” the young engineer said.

Grant nodded silently.

“Got my assignment this morning,” Tavalera said, looking somewhere between worried and hopeful. “It’s a scoopship, all right: the Glen P. Wilson.”

Grant still said nothing. There had been no assignment for him in the morning’s communications bulletin. As far as he knew, he was to report aboard the research station and get his assignment there.