Ben Bova: Leviathans of Jupiter

“Please stand still and hold your breath,” the doctor called, his back to Deirdre.

She heard a faint buzzing, then a single pinging note.

“Very good,” said Dr. Pohan, turning back to her. “You can come out now.”

“That’s it?” she asked as she stepped out of the booth. “That’s the test?”

“Complete three-dimensional body scan,” the doctor said, bobbing his head. “Now all we need is a blood sample.”

He went to another cabinet, rummaged in a drawer, and pulled out a medical syringe. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he said.

Deirdre thought otherwise, but she held out her bare arm for him to puncture.

“DEPARTURE IN SIXTY SECONDS,” said the overhead speaker.

“MAIN DRIVE IGNITION.”

Australia ’s departure from Ceres was barely noticeable. Fully dressed once again, Deirdre felt a slight jar, nothing more. But then she realized that she was beginning to feel heavy, almost sluggish. The ship’s building up to one g , she told herself as she followed Dr. Pohan back to his office. It’s going to be like this all the way out to Jupiter.

Deirdre sank gratefully into the chair in front of the doctor’s desk. Dr. Pohan was smiling pleasantly at her as he tilted slightly back in his chair. The tips of his curling mustache almost reached the crinkled corners of his eyes, she saw.

“You have been a good patient, Ms. Ambrose.”

“What happens now?” she asked.

With a slight shrug, the doctor replied, “Now we wait for the computer to analyze your scan and blood test. That might take a few hours. You are free to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

Dr. Pohan glanced at his wrist, then answered, “It’s almost the dinner hour. Go to the ship’s lounge. Meet your fellow Jupiter-bound passengers. Your luggage has been delivered to your stateroom, of course.”

Deirdre felt puzzled. “But I don’t know where the lounge is. I don’t even know where my stateroom is. I’ve just come aboard—”

“Of course,” said the doctor. “This is all new to you, isn’t it?”

With a preening brush of his curly mustache, the doctor rose from his desk and took Deirdre by the hand. She got to her feet, towering over the diminutive Asian, and let him lead her to the corridor door.

“That way,” said Dr. Pohan, pointing down the passageway to the right. With his other hand he fished a remote control box from his tunic pocket.

“Main lounge,” he said to the palm-sized remote.

A series of yellow arrows began flickering along the deck tiles.

“Follow the arrows,” Dr. Pohan said. “They will lead you to the lounge.”

“But my stateroom?” Deirdre asked.

“Oh, just ask any of the map displays in the passageways. They’ll show you. It’s simple.”

Deirdre nodded, but she felt more confused than reassured.

Feeling disconcertingly heavy, Deirdre followed the blinking arrows along the passageway, then turned down a shorter segment that ended at the double doors of an elevator. The doors slid open as she approached them. Without her saying a word or touching a button, the doors closed silently and Deirdre felt the elevator dropping. Before she could catch her breath the cab stopped so abruptly that her knees buckled slightly. The doors slid open again.

Another corridor, with more yellow arrows beckoning her onward. There were other colored arrows, too, she saw: red, blue, green. They must lead to other parts of the ship, she thought. Maybe one set of them will guide me to my quarters.

Like the passageway upstairs, this corridor curved noticeably. The corridors run along the outer perimeter of each level, Deirdre figured. The offices and other compartments are built around the core. Wishing she’d spent more time in the centrifuge back home, Deirdre plodded along the passageway.

She hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps when she saw a tall, lanky fellow standing up ahead of her, all arms and legs, scratching his thick strawberry red thatch of hair and looking very puzzled.

He was peering at the various blinking arrows on the deck, Deirdre saw.

“Are you lost?” she asked.

He twitched with surprise. “Oh! Hi!” he said, in a squeaky, high-pitched voice.

“Are you lost?” Deirdre repeated.

With another scratch of his bushy red mop he said, “I’m trying to find the main lounge.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Deirdre. “Just follow the yellow arrows.”

“That’s just it,” said the lanky fellow. “Which ones are the yellows? I’m color blind.”

“Color blind?” Deirdre had never heard of such a thing.

“I can’t make out any colors at all,” said the young man. “The world’s all black and white to me. With a lot of gray.”

“That’s awful!”

“It’s genetic. I was born with it.”

“You mean you can’t see any colors at all?”

“Not a one. I can tell that your hair is darker than the skin of your face. And your clothes are sort of pale gray.”

Deirdre felt terribly sad for him.

“My name’s Andy Corvus,” he said, sticking out his right hand.

“Deirdre Ambrose,” she replied, taking his hand in hers.

Andy Corvus was a centimeter or so taller than she, which somehow pleased Deirdre: she was almost always the tallest one in any group. He was thin as a reed, though, lanky and loose-jointed. His unruly thatch of red hair reminded Deirdre of her father. He’s what Dad must have looked like when he was young. A lot skinnier, though. His eyes were pale blue and his face was kind of cute, she thought, with a little button of a nose and a sprinkling of tiny freckles across it. There was something a little odd about his face, she realized, something slightly out of kilter. The two sides didn’t exactly match up, as if they were separate pieces that were pasted together a little unevenly. Deirdre decided it made him look more interesting than he would have otherwise.

He was wearing a bright red short-sleeved shirt over garish orange slacks. Terribly mismatched, Deirdre thought. Then she remembered that colors meant nothing to him.

“Deirdre’s a beautiful name,” he said. “A poetic name.”

Smiling shyly as she disengaged her hand, Deirdre said, “My friends call me Dee.”

He broke into a wide, toothy grin. “I’d like to be your friend, Dee.”

“Good.” She slipped her arm into his. “Now let’s go find the main lounge.”

The yellow arrows ended at the open double doors of the main lounge. With Andy Corvus beside her, Deirdre stood indecisively at the doorway.

The lounge was luxuriously decorated with colorful sweeping draperies along the bulkheads and wide flat screens that displayed scenes from space: the beautiful swirling clouds of Jupiter, Saturn with its gaudy rings, the stark grandeur of the battered, pockmarked Moon, even the breathtakingly deep blue ocean world of Earth, flecked with brilliant white cloud formations.

Every table was occupied, she saw. More than two dozen men and women sat in small clusters at the little round tables scattered across the lounge. Most of them seemed intent on private conversations, heads nodding, expressions serious. But there was one group of a half-dozen men off in a corner, talking animatedly and suddenly roaring with laughter.

“Somebody told a joke, I betcha,” said Andy, needlessly.

“I didn’t realize there were so many going to Jupiter,” Deirdre said. “I thought it was only four replacements for the scientific staff.”

Corvus nodded vigorously. “Well, there’s a whole crew of scoopship people. But just four of us scooters. Plus a couple of dozen bean counters and paper shufflers.”