Ben Bova: Leviathans of Jupiter

He was a quiet type, his demeanor usually serious, his actions studied and methodical. No blazing genius, Grant Archer was a fine administrator, smart enough to allow the younger men and women who showed flashes of brilliance to do their work without being overly bothered by the bureaucracies that dogged every research program. He had kept his youthful slimness, thanks to a metabolism that seemed unable to produce fat. After a quarter century of marriage he was still the earnest, broad-shouldered, good-looking man that Marjorie had fallen in love with back in their college days on Earth.

His one obvious physical change over those years was that his sandy brown hair had turned silver. Grant kept it cropped militarily short, almost down to a skullcap. And once he had been named director of the station he had grown a trim little beard; it made him look more mature, he believed, more impressive. His wife thought it gave him an air of authority, but it evaporated whenever he smiled.

“Is she really coming out here?” Marjorie asked drowsily.

Staring up at the shadowed ceiling of their bedroom, Grant nodded. Then, realizing his wife couldn’t see him in the darkness, he said, “She’s on the passenger list. Her, and a half-dozen of her personal staff.”

“Don’t let it worry you,” Marjorie advised sleepily. “She’s probably coming out here to give you some kind of award. You deserve it.”

Grant knew better. Marjorie turned over and went to sleep, but Grant could not close his eyes. Katherine Westfall is coming here. Herself. With her hatchet men. That’s what they are, Grant knew. He’d looked them up in the nets. Since being named to the IAA’s governing council, Westfall and her flunkies had ruthlessly slashed the organization’s research budget. The teams exploring Mars depended now entirely on private money; they were even allowing tourists to visit the Martian village that they had excavated. The work on Venus was down to almost nothing, as well.

And now she’s coming here.

Turning on his side, Grant told himself, They can’t close us down! They can’t! Those creatures are intelligent. I’m sure of it.

His mind kept returning to the mission, the journey into that immense alien sea. Twenty years ago, almost, yet he remembered every agonized moment of it. The surgical implants, the pain, the cold dread of being immersed in the high-pressure perfluorocarbon. Living in that slimy gunk, breathing it into his lungs instead of air.

The rapture of being linked to the submersible’s systems, feeling the power of the fusion drive as your own heartbeat, seeing through the dark forbidding sea with eyes that went far beyond puny human capability. What was it Lane had said about being linked? Better than sex. It was, in a way. Beyond human. Godlike.

It was dangerous, feeling all that power. The sin of pride. Hubris. They had nearly died in that deep, dark sea.

But meeting the leviathans had been worth all the pain, all the danger to body and soul. Seeing those incredible creatures, bigger than mountains, huge, immense, living deep in the Jovian ocean, lords of their world.

The mission had nearly killed them all. Lane O’Hara had been seriously hurt. Zeb Muzorewa, kind, thoughtful, gifted Zeb had almost died. Zeb had been Grant’s mentor, his guide. Grant had been lucky to survive the mission, lucky to return to the world of humans.

Not luck, he reminded himself. It wasn’t luck. That Jovian creature helped us. It saw we were sinking and it carried us on its back, like a dolphin carrying a drowning man, up to where we could get our propulsion systems working again and get out of the ocean, back into orbit and to the station.

They’re intelligent. Those immense creatures are intelligent. Grant believed it with all his soul. The Leviathans are intelligent. They have to be.

Grant glanced at his wife, lying beside him. For several moments he listened to her breathing: deep and regular. Sound asleep. I wish I could sleep, too.

The memory of that mission haunted him. No humans had tried to penetrate Jupiter’s ocean since then. The cost in human lives was too high. People had been killed, people had been permanently disabled. Grant himself still limped from the electronic implants that had been dug into his legs. Stem cell treatments, years of physical therapy and psychological counseling, yet still he limped. Psychosomatic, the medics told him. Yes, of course. But his legs still ached.

Lane O’Hara had returned to Earth for recuperation. She never came back to Jupiter. Muzorewa spent months in recovery and once he’d returned to Gold he was named director of the research station. He immediately started planning a new mission into the ocean of Jupiter, but this time it would be robotic. Zeb would not send fragile humans into that alien environment. Not willingly.

When Zeb retired and Grant succeeded him as station head, he continued that policy. Uncrewed vessels of increasing sophistication went into the Jovian ocean. To study the Leviathans they had to go so deep that communication with the orbiting station was cut off. The scientists had to wait impatiently until the probes returned to find out what they had learned. Many probes never returned, and the scientists never learned why.

Grant knew that there was only one way to save the work he directed, one way to continue studying the leviathans. He had to prove beyond a doubt that the Jovian creatures were intelligent. And to do that, he had to send a human crew back into that cold, deep, alien sea. For years he had quietly, secretly, diverted funding from the research station’s normal programs into a furtive effort to build a new submersible capable of carrying a human crew down to the depths where the leviathans dwelled.

Now Katherine Westfall was on her way to Jupiter to slash the funding jugular of the research station. Once she found out about the new submersible she would have Grant’s head on a platter. Maybe she already knows, he thought, and she’s coming out here to preside at my execution personally.

He lay on his back and stared sleeplessly into the shadows of his bedroom. I can’t send people back down there, Grant told himself. It’s too dangerous; I can’t send people to risk their lives like that. How can I ask them to go where I can’t go myself?

But there’s no other option. We’ve learned as much as we can from the automated probes. We’ve got to get a team of scientists down into that ocean, with equipment that will allow us to make meaningful contact with the leviathans. Or forget about them altogether. Give up trying to make contact with an intelligent alien race.

He closed his eyes and muttered a prayer for guidance. No answer came to him, but Grant accepted God’s seeming silence. He hears, Grant told himself. He’ll send the answer. One way or another.

“What’s so great about Earth?” Corvus asked, looking puzzled. “I’ve lived there most of my life. It’s no big thrill.”

Before Deirdre could think of a reply, Dorn said gravely, “I can see where Dee would be excited about it. If you’ve never been there before, well … it is big, and lots of it is still quite beautiful. The tropical rain forests—”

“What’s left of them,” Corvus grumbled.

“The open plains, the mountains, the oceans. They truly are beautiful, more beautiful than any space habitat, certainly.”

Corvus shrugged impatiently. “And the cities, with the crowds and crooks, the noise, the dirt, the diseases.”

“Don’t you like Earth, Andy?” Deirdre asked.

His expression softened. “Oh, I guess so. But it’s not paradise, believe me.”

“I still want to see it, experience it,” she said.

“It’s worth seeing,” said Dorn, almost wistfully.