Jupiter (42 page)

Another thump. The bridge tilted crazily. Even the emergency lamps blinked.

Hanging onto one of the console's handgrips, Grant worked madly to reboot the power bus. One by one, the circuit breakers clicked on. One by one, the red lights on his console flicked to amber or green. The thrusters came back on-line, although Grant saw that their telltale lights were amber. There must be a lot of damage, he thought. Maybe the tubes have been dented by the sharks. He wished he had time to link with the ship, then he'd know immediately what was wrong.

'Here comes another one!' Karlstad yelped.

'Thrusters to max!' Krebs said. She didn't need Grant to turn them on, she did it herself from O'Hara's console.

Even immersed in the thick liquid that filled the bridge Grant felt the surge of thrust. Another thump, but this time it was a glancing blow. Still it set the ship spinning.

'I don't know how long the thrusters can maintain full power,' Grant yelled.

'We have to get away from them,' Karlstad shouted back.

Krebs shook her head. 'They're faster than we are. They are racing ahead of us.'

'If only we had a weapon,' Karlstad muttered,'something to defend ourselves with.'

Grant heard himself say, 'What about the plasma exhaust?'

'What?'

'The exhaust from the thrusters. It's over ten thousand degrees when it leaves the nozzles. It boils the water behind us. They mustn't like that.'

Krebs seemed to think it over for a moment. 'If they stayed behind us…'

'They're not,' Karlstad said, his closed eyes seeing what the ship's sensors showed. 'They're forming up in front of us again.'

'We're moving at top speed and they race past us,' said Krebs, sounding defeated.

'They're too fucking stupid to realize we're not food,' Karlstad grumbled.

'By the time they discover that fact, we will be dead.'

Grant said, 'Can't we spin the ship? Or turn in a tight circle? Spray our exhaust in all directions?'

'What good would that do?'

'It might discourage them.'

Karlstad laughed bitterly. 'Brilliant! You want to circle the wagons when we only have one wagon. Absolutely brilliant.'

'It's worth a try,' Grant urged.

'We have nothing else,' said Krebs. 'We have nothing to lose.'

With the power back on, Grant grabbed for the loose optical fibers and slapped them onto the chips in his legs. Pain! Sharp, hard needles of pain jabbed at him. The thrusters were running full-out but they were damaged, their tubes dented from the battering by the sharks.

At least the sharks were not attacking now. Krebs was turning the sub in tight circles, spinning a helix of superheated steam around them, keeping the predators at bay.

For how long? Grant asked himself. He knew the answer: until the thrusters give out. Then it won't matter if they renew their attacks or not; it won't matter if they think we're food or not. We'll be dead, drifting in this alien ocean, without the power to climb back to the surface and leave. We'll sink until this eggshell is crushed by the pressure. We'll die here.

Leviathan could scarcely believe what its sensing members were telling it. The darters had broken off their pursuit to chase -Leviathan did not know what to call the tiny round, flat thing that had caught the darters' hungry attention. It was unlike anything the Kin had seen before, except for the tale that had been flashed among them about a strange, cold alien that had appeared briefly and then vanished into the abyss above.

Leviathan remembered sensing something like this stranger, when it had been in the barren cold region on the other side of the eternal storm. It was not one of the Kin, not even a member unit that had broken away to bud.

Whatever it was, the darters were swarming around it and the stranger - whatever it was - was spinning madly, squirting hot jets of steam that boiled the sea into wild bubbling froth.

Where are the Kin? Leviathan wondered. How far from here could they be? Leviathan considered calling to them, but feared that his distress signal would rekindle the darters' attention.

The darters had forgotten about Leviathan in their blind hunger for this small, almost defenseless creature. The stranger was giving Leviathan a chance to race away, unnoticed by the instinct-driven darters.

That would mean leaving the stranger to the predators. It did not seem able to get away from them. Every time it tried to climb higher, to head back toward the cold abyss above, the darters drove it back down again. One of them came too close to the hot steam and twisted away in agony, howling so loudly that Leviathan's sound sensors shut down for several moments. Two of the darters immediately attacked their wounded companion, silencing it forever with a few voracious bites.

But the others kept circling the stranger, holding it at bay, waiting for it to exhaust itself.

'You've got to get higher!' Karlstad demanded, his voice almost an hysterical shriek. 'We've got to get away from them!'

Krebs shot him a venomous glance. 'Every time I try to lift, they swarm above me and batter us down again.'

'We can't take much more pounding,' Karlstad said. 'Hull integrity…'

Grant was awash with pain. His console lights were flickering from amber to red. The thrusters were close to failure and there was nothing he could do about it.

Krebs seemed to be fully aware of the situation. Grimly, she muttered, 'Full thruster power. We break loose from them or we die here and now.'

Vision blurring, his whole body spasming with agony, Grant felt the thrusters strain as he diverted all available power to them. The lights went out again as the bridge tilted dizzily, the emergency lamps glowed feebly. Grant reached for the handgrips on his console. 'Look out!' Karlstad screamed.

Something hit the ship with the power of an avalanche. If Grant hadn't been hanging on he would have been flung across the bridge again. Krebs went sailing, banged against the food dispenser with a solid, sickening thud of flesh against metal. Karlstad was holding on to both his console's handgrips, his feet torn free of the floor loops and flailing wildly.

'We're sinking!' Karlstad yelled. 'Hull's been breached!'

Grant saw that Krebs was unconscious. Or dead. An ugly gash across her forehead was streaming a fog of blood into the fluid they were breathing. The optical fibers had been torn loose from her legs.

'What can we do?' Karlstad screeched. 'What can we do?'

Grant tried to ignore his pain as he tapped at his console's touchscreens, calling up all the ship's systems. The sudden rush of information boggled his mind and body.
Everything -
every chip, every wire, every square centimeter of structure, all the sensors, the ship's steering controls, the thrusters, the power generator, the auxiliaries, all the life support systems, the medical monitors, the lights, the wiring, the welds along the hull — every molecule of the ship, every bit of data flowing through all its systems, all flooded in on Grant like a huge, overpowering tidal wave. He was flung into a maelstrom, mind spinning madly as he desperately tried to cling to some vestige of himself, some trace of his own soul in this deluge of sensations, some thread of control.

He could no longer feel his own body. That reality had been flung aside, left far behind in this new reality of— power. That's what it is, Grant told himself. Power.
I am the ship
. I have all its power, all its pain, all its destiny within me.

Godlike, he expanded his senses. He saw, sensed, felt every part of the ship. The crack in the outermost hull was like the sharp slash of a knife wound; the labored straining of the thrusters like the excruciating knotting of cramped, overworked muscles.

Zheng He
was losing buoyancy, maintaining its position only by dint of the thrusters' full-throated push against the ever-present power of Jupiter's pervasive gravity.

And he saw the shark-like creatures, more than a dozen of them, swarming above and on both sides of the slowly sinking submersible.

Karlstad was babbling, but it was a faint jabbering noise far in the background of Grant's consciousness. I am the ship, he told himself. I'm wounded, badly hurt. How can I get out of this? How can I get away? When Krebs tried to climb out of this they battered us so hard the hull cracked. What should I do? What
can
I do?

Go inert, he heard a voice in his mind say. Shut down the thrusters. Let the sharks think you're dead. Let them find out that you're metal, not flesh; an alien, not food.

You'll sink. You'll sink deeper, the outside pressure will increase, the crack in the hull will get worse, you'll be torn apart, crushed, before you can get the thrusters started again.

Maybe. All this flashed through Grant's mind in less than a second. Through it all, the one — only — hope he had was the fusion generator. It purred along as if nothing outside its alloy shell mattered in the slightest. That little artificial star kept on fusing atomic nuclei, transforming matter into energy, oblivious to the wants or needs of the humans who had built it, those whose lives depended on it. Grant felt its warmth like the fire in a hearth, comforting, protecting against the raging storms outside.

He shut down the thrusters. He turned off the outside lights. The ocean out there went black, sunless, a blind oblivion. Except that Grant could see; through the ship's infrared sensors and sonar he could see the imagery of the huge sharks gliding around and above him.

'We're sinking!' Karlstad repeated, his voice high and shaking, even in their fluid environment.

'Take care of Krebs,' Grant said evenly. 'See how Lane and Zeb are doing.'

'But we're sinking!'

'We'll be all right,' Grant said, hoping it was true. 'I've got her under control,' he lied.

The sharks were coming closer, nosing around the slowly settling
Zheng He
. Can't you sense that we're metal? Grant asked them silently. Are you too stupid to see that we're not food?

One of the huge creatures brushed again the sub, knocking it sideways. Grant saw it coming, held on to his console.

'Jesus!' Karlstad yelped. 'Jesus. Jesus.'

Grant almost smiled. We could use His help, he thought. Does God see us this far down in this alien sea?

A low rumbling sound, so low-pitched that Grant felt it along his aching bones rather than heard it. Long, like the rumble of distant thunder, but so powerful that it made the bridge vibrate. An earthquake sound, here where there was no ground to shake, not a solid clump of soil or a rock for tens of thousands of kilometers.

The sonar was tingling along Grant's nerves. He closed his eyes and saw the imagery: something was heading their way, something superhuman, a huge power streaking through the water toward him, and it was emitting this low, thunderous
profundo
note as steadily as an avalanche roars down a mountainside.

The sharks pulled away, turning in unison so fast that Grant felt the sharp waves they made as a single unified pulse in the water. The infrared sensors kicked in and showed what was approaching: that immense solitary whale. It was rushing toward the sharks like a huge cannonball fired at supersonic velocity.

The sharks seemed to be gathering themselves into a battle formation, facing the onrushing whale. They've forgotten about me, Grant saw. They're ready to confront the whale. Maybe I can slip away…

Cautiously, he lit the thrusters again. Minimum thrust. Don't call attention to yourself. Balance your sink rate. Maintain buoyancy by using thrust to balance the leak.

Zheng He
rose a little. Grant watched through the ship's sensors as the gigantic beast raced straight toward the waiting delta-shaped sharks. He edged the thrusters slightly higher and maneuvered the battered submersible away from the predators. All the while the ocean reverberated with that lone, sustained, low-pitched note, like the melancholy howl of a solitary wolf in a snowy wilderness, but many, many octaves lower and enormously more powerful and sustained far longer than Earthly lungs could ever achieve.

The gigantic creature barrelled into the sharks. Instead of fleeing from it, as Grant had expected, the sharks spread their formation into a wide-spaced net and surrounded the whale. They're not running away from it, Grant saw. They're attacking it!

Leviathan knew it was a foolish gesture, most likely a fatal one. The alien creature seemed to be dead, gone dark, sinking slowly toward the hot abyss below.

Still, the stranger had diverted the darters and saved Leviathan from them. It was too late now to turn back. Once Leviathan had sounded its distress call to the Kin, the darters left the stranger and rediscovered Leviathan, alone and near enough to attack.

Leviathan did not wait for the predators to strike. It roared in toward them, urging all its members to their utmost effort, desperately hoping to confuse the darters and scatter them before they could form their attack pattern.

But they were too fast, too agile for that forlorn hope. Even as Leviathan rushed toward them, the darters spread themselves into a screen, above, below and on both sides of Leviathan's charge.

Bellowing its distress call, Leviathan barely had time to notice that the stranger was not yet dead. Even though it had gone dark and a trail of bubbles showed that its shell had been cracked, it began to emit a jet of heated water — not as vigorously as before, but still it was a sign of life.

And then the darters were upon Leviathan, nipping at its flanks, tearing at its flagella members. Cripple the flagella and Leviathan was helpless. But the mindless flagella were weapons, as well as propulsion members. Leviathan clubbed at the darters, felt bone snap and flesh rupture, madly hoping that if it killed a few of them, the rest would begin feeding on their own and leave Leviathan alone.

But the darters would never leave a lone and wounded prey. In a growing frenzy they would attack and feed, ripping through Leviathan's protective armor to get at the vital organ-members, while the vibrations of their furious struggle would signal others from far away to join the battle and the inevitable feasting.