Ben Bova: Leviathans of Jupiter

But George was not admiring his daughter’s artwork now. Still staring at the display screen, he impatiently called out, “Screen, show Ceres.”

The display obediently shifted from the approaching torch ship to show the cratered, dusty rock of the asteroid around which the habitat orbited. Largest of the ’roids in the Belt, Ceres was barely a thousand kilometers across, an oversized boulder, dusty, pitted, dead. Beyond its curving limb there was nothing but the dark emptiness of infinity, laced with hard pinpoints of stars bright enough to shine through the camera’s protective filters.

Big George clasped his hands behind his back as he stared at the unblinking stars.

“I only came out here to get rich quick and then go back to Earth,” he muttered. “Never thought I’d spend the rest of my fookin’ life in the Belt.”

Deirdre gave her father a sympathetic smile. “You can go back Earthside any time you want to.”

He shook his shaggy head. “Nah. Been away too long. I’d be a stranger there. Leastways, I got some friends here.…”

“Tons of friends,” Deirdre said.

“And your mother’s ashes.”

Deirdre nodded. Mom’s been dead for nearly five years, she thought, but he still mourns her.

“You can visit me on Earth,” she said brightly. “You won’t be a total stranger.”

“Yeah,” he said, without enthusiasm. “Maybe.”

“I really have to go on this ship, Daddy. I’ve got to get to Jupiter; otherwise I won’t get the scholarship.”

“I could send you to school on Earth, if that’s what you want. I can afford it.”

“That’s what I want,” she said gently. “And now I can get it without putting the burden on you.”

“That ship’ll be burning out to Jupiter at one full g, y’know,” George said. “Six times heavier than here.”

“I’ve put in tons of hours in the centrifuge, Daddy. I can handle it. The station orbiting Jupiter is one-sixth gravity, just like here.”

George nodded absently. Deirdre thought he had run out of objections.

They felt the slightest of tremors and the speaker built into the overhead announced, “DOCKING COMPLETED.”

George looked almost startled. “I guess I never thought about you leavin’.”

“I’d have to go, sooner or later.”

“Yeah, I know, but…”

“If you don’t want me to go…”

“Nah.” He shook his head fiercely. “You don’t want to get stuck here the rest o’ your life, like me.”

“I’ll come back, Dad.”

George shrugged. “It’s a big world out there. Lots of things to see and do. Lots of places for a bright young woman to make a life for herself.”

Deirdre didn’t know what to say.

His scowl returning, George said, “Just don’t let any of those sweet-talkin’ blokes take advantage of you. Hear?”

She broke into a giggle. “Oh, Daddy, I know how to take care of myself.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But I won’t be there to protect you, y’know.”

Deirdre grabbed him by his unkempt beard with both hands, the way she had since she’d been a baby, and pecked at his cheek.

“I love you, Daddy.”

George blushed. But he clasped his daughter by both shoulders and kissed her solidly on the forehead. “I love you, Dee Dee.”

The airlock hatch swung open with a sighing puff of overly warm air. A short, sour-faced Asian man in a deep blue uniform trimmed with an officer’s gold braid stepped through and snapped, “Deirdre Ambrose?”

“That’s me.”

“This way,” the Asian said, gesturing curtly toward the passageway beyond the airlock hatch.

George Ambrose watched his only child disappear into the passageway, the first step on her journey to Jupiter. And then to Earth. I’ll never see her again, he thought. Never.

Then he muttered, “I still don’t see why they need a fookin’ microbiologist.”

Suppressing an impulse to look back over her shoulder for one last glimpse of her father, Deirdre stepped carefully along the curving tube that connected the Chrysalis II habitat to the fusion ship. She could feel her pulse thumping along her veins. Chrysalis II was all the home she had ever known. She was heading into the new, the unknown. It was exciting—and a little scary.

The tube felt warmer than she was accustomed to. Its walls glowed softly white, as if fluorescent, with a spiral motif threading along its length. The flooring felt slightly spongy to her tread, not hard and solid like the decks of the habitat. She knew it was her imagination, but somehow she felt slightly heavier, as if the docked torch ship had a stronger gravity field than the habitat she was leaving.

She heard the airlock hatch clang shut behind her and a moment later the crabby-looking little ship’s officer scurried past her without speaking a word and disappeared around the curve of the tube. He’s not very friendly, Deirdre thought.

When she got to the end of the tube he was standing there, by the ship’s gleaming metal airlock, glaring at her with obvious impatience.

“Embarkation desk,” he said, jabbing a thumb past the hatch.

Deirdre stepped through the open hatch into a compartment of bare metal bulkheads, not much bigger than a closet. There were three ordinary-looking doors set into the bulkhead opposite her. She hesitated, not sure of which door she was meant to take.

“Right-hand side,” the officer snapped from the other side of the hatch, pointing again.

Deirdre opened the door and immediately saw that the torch ship’s interior was colorfully decorated. The compartment’s walls were covered with brightly patterned fabric. The overhead glowed with glareless lighting. The deck was thickly carpeted in rich earth tones of green and brown. Carpets! she thought. Incredible luxury, compared to Chrysalis II ’s utilitarian décor. And this is just an anteroom, she realized.

In front of her there was another door, marked EMBARKATION RECEPTION. Deirdre tapped on it, and when no one answered, she cautiously slid it open.

A man in a white uniform was sitting behind a metal desk in the middle of the compartment. The bulkheads on both sides glowed pearl gray: smart screens, Deirdre recognized. Behind the seated officer another wall screen displayed a scene of golden-leafed trees, a forest of Earth, heartbreakingly beautiful.

The man got slowly to his feet. He, too, was Asian, and no taller than Deirdre’s chin. He smiled and made a courtly little bow, fists clenched at his sides.

“Welcome to Australia, ” he said. Gesturing to the gracefully curved chair of leather and chrome in front of the desk, he invited, “Please, Ms. Ambrose, be seated and allow me to introduce myself: I am Dr. Lin Pohan, ship’s medical officer.”

Dr. Pohan was as small as the surly officer who had ushered Deirdre aboard the Australia . He was almost totally bald, except for a fringe of dull gray hair, but a luxuriant mustache of silver gray curled across his face. His skin was spiderwebbed with creases, and as he smiled at Deirdre his eyes crinkled with good humor. He looked like a wrinkled old gnome to Deirdre. She realized this man had never taken rejuvenation treatments. She had learned in her history classes that some people on Earth shunned rejuv on religious grounds. Could he be one of them?

“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, a little hesitantly.

Dr. Pohan bobbed his head up and down, then replied, “We must go through the formalities of checking your boarding file and medical record.”

“That should all be in your computer,” Deirdre said.

“Yes, of course. But then I’m afraid I must subject you to a complete physical examination.”