Jupiter's Reef (2 page)

“Now you know,” she replied.

“That you read my mind ... before I came into the place?”

Mary nodded and smiled.

The ship was throttling up when a sudden alarm sounded and the steady thrum of the engines changed pitch.

“Not now,” said Alex, searching the dash panel for an explanation.

“LAUNCH ABORT ... POWER LOSS ... LAUNCH ABORT ...” said the computer’s monotonous voice.

“We’re fifty klicks from the ground,” shouted Alex. “What do you mean, ‘launch abort’? We can’t abort!”

The emotionless voice of the ship corrected him. “FORTY TWO POINT FOUR KILOMETERS AND FALLING,” it said. “LANDING LOCATION BEACONS ACTIVATING ... IMPACT IN SEVENTEEN MINUTES.”

“Dingers,” shouted Alex. “Computer ... where will that put us?”

“NORTH POLAR ICE FIELDS ... EIGHTY THREE DEGREES NORTH ... FORTY SEVEN DEGREES WEST.”

Mary had already cinched up her seat belt restraints and was putting on the polycer impact helmet that had been stowed under her seat. She was already broadcasting their condition to Cydonia, using her built-in radio.

“There’s no base near the spot we’re going to crash,” she said. “Cydonia is alerting the Red Squad.”

Alex switched on the radio. The sound of their transmissions cut in loudly “...donia Base to
Diver
. We have your fix and are tracking you. In five minutes the ground radar will lose you. Do you copy,
Diver
? In five minutes we ...”

Mary was receiving several channels simultaneously. One of them was Mars Global Weather. It said that the dust storm that had imprisoned Cydonia Spaceport during most of Alex and Mary’s visit had circled the globe and was bearing down on their predicted crash site. Ground crews would have to wait for a clearing in the storm to begin a search.

Alex had fearlessly taken
Diver
into the depths of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot but now he was mortally afraid. And he was angry with himself. Mary’s life was on the line. And it was his fault.

“Come on, ship,” he snarled as he fumbled with the controls. “Give me a clue.”

Mary was curled into a ball as she watched the viewscreen. Moments ago it had been filled with indigo and twinkling stars. She even thought she caught sight of her favorite star, the steady blue light she had watched all her life, before the red horizon of Mars rudely blotted it out.

Now only mottled pink met her sensitive eyes. And Alex was saying over and over. “Oh Mary, I’m so sorry. I’m such a dinger!”

She knew it was pointless to argue. “Let him work,” she told herself. “Don’t argue. Don’t cajole.”

Besides, conversation wouldn’t clarify anything. Certainly not for her, at least. She could hear Alex’s thoughts clearly. And even though she felt his fear mingling with her own, she also felt his complete love.

Mary recalled exploring Jupiter’s Reef of Life. She felt privileged to have witnessed a new ecology floating in a vast pinwheel of life fifty kilometers below the clouds; just exactly as Alex had envisioned it.

She thought of the strange clicker men whose blanket-like bodies looked like red and black velvet flowers but behaved more like squids when they darted around in the glowing blue-green half light of the reef.

She’d seen more than she had a right to. More wonders than she could recount. And most of it wasn’t on Jupiter.

“Aw dingers, Mary.” moaned Alex. “If I only knew what’s going on. She was fine a moment ago. Now we’re headin’ for sand.”

Then he remembered the computer. He mentally kicked his own ass as he croaked the order:

“Computer! Diagnose emergency. Execute evasive action!” he shouted at the ceiling.

“MICROFUSION GRID OFF LINE. INSUFFICIENT POWER.”

The brevity of the message chilled Alex to the bone. He’d had long conversations with this automated savant, now it was keeping their conversation to a minimum. Conserving energy. They really were almost out of power.

“Mary,” Alex shouted. “Take the com!” A moment later he was free of his harness and out of his chair, heading for the rear of the cabin. He threw open a panel and thrust his head inside.

“Dingers!” he bellowed.

“What?” said Mary, holding the drive stick helplessly in her hand. She remembered her flight training; the hours in simulation and the times she’d taken the com to give Alex a little rest. All her flight time, real or simulated, had been under full power. Now, in her hand the stick felt limp and lifeless.

“What am I supposed to do with the stick?” she yelled. “It’s dead!”

Alex’s answer was muffled but she heard his thoughts. “If the power comes back someone has to keep the ship’s nose up.”

“Fuck it!” yelled Alex.

Mary saw the problem as he did. A short circuit had reset the power train. Fifty microfusion cells were now back on line but required over fifteen minutes to charge. When they came back it would be all at once or not at all.

Diver
entered freefall, but its aerodynamics kept it headed forward like a black dart knifing back into Mars’ atmosphere. Its forward hull was heating up fast.

“LIFE SUPPORT ... NOMINAL ...” said the computer as Alex returned to his seat.

Mary released the stick as Alex touched the com.

“I found a sulphur beetle shell in one of the contacts. They’re not supposed to be anywhere but Io,” he said. Alex held out his hand to her. In it was a piece of reddish carapace.

“I’m not touching that thing,” she said. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“Cooked for supper, my love,” said Alex, forcing a grin.

“Computer ... estimate time to impact,” said Alex.

“Seven minutes, seventeen seconds.”

2
Diver
had some reserve power and used it to stabilize the ship as it glided toward the Martian surface. On the viewscreen, Mars’ flickering image was nearly impossible to read. Alex stabbed an angry finger at the console and the screen slid away, revealing the cockpit windows.

Mary protested. “Won’t we need that shielding if we crash?”

Alex nodded. “I hate to do that,” he said. “But I need to see where we’re going.”

The ground was coming up fast. Alex shut down every system he could think of that wasn’t needed including the radio. They were well out of range of Cydonia and headed straight for the snowy edge of Mars’ north polar cap.

“We won’t need the radio,” he said to Mary. “We have you, after all.”

He didn’t tell her that he’d taken a big chance and shut down their cabin life support. He wanted to conserve all their power for the landing.

A small screen on the dash gave Alex the telemetry he needed. He stared at it dubiously.

“Do you think the fusion cells can charge in time?” asked Mary Seventeen.

Alex shook his head. “We should crash at about the same time.”

“You can’t push it?”

“No.”

“Do we need them all? Can’t we just charge some of them?”

“No, Mary, my love,” said Alex sadly. “It’s all or nothing. Besides, it takes the same amount of time to charge some of them as it does to charge them all. They were primed when I reset them. That should buy us some time ... and I have the computer set to use the power as soon as it’s there.”

Mary’s biological radio detected a flurry of emergency transmissions. Tharsis Control was tracking
Diver
’s descent and had already scrambled rescue crews. Other transmissions told of ground crews squabbling about fueling or launching emergency vehicles, while still other broadcasts seemed to be mostly gossip; spreading word of an immanent tragedy.

“We just got famous,” said Mary. “The whole planet is talking about us.”

“Have they scrambled rescue crews?”

“From Tharsis,” said Mary. “They’re closest.”

“That’s a thousand kilometers away!” shouted Alex.

Alex peered down at the little telemetry monitor that was set into the dash.

“Sheeesh,” he said in disgust. “I could head toward them ... shrink that distance a bit ... but we’d be landing in sand and rock. The snow field’s our only chance.”

Mary didn’t speak. She was listening to the radio chatter hoping to bring Alex some encouraging news. She thought it odd at first that they weren’t sending instructions to
Diver
, but she realized that they probably knew the ship’s com was powered down. She heard Tharsis say they were tracking the ship’s locator beacon and mentioned it to Alex.

Alex smiled. “Thanks for the ray of hope.”

Mary watched the landscape loom before them, but she guessed they were still at least five kilometers up because she could count very few craters. Below that altitude all the craters became visible, and unless some man-made structure could be seen it was nearly impossible to get a sense of scale.

“I’m guessing we’re still about five clicks up,” she said.

“Four point six,” said Alex. “Not bad.”

He was forcing himself to be as positive as possible, but time was running out and by his reckoning they were only a minute from touchdown.

“Computer,” he said. “Speed up power cell initialization!”

There was no response; only the whine of stabilization thrusters.

“Dingers,” said Alex.

The edge of the polar snow field passed quickly below them. Ancient criss-cross dunes of carbon dioxide and water ice were all they could see. Alex groaned in frustration. There was nothing he could do but keep the ship’s nose up as he watched the ground get closer.

“Strap in tight, my love,” said Alex.

A tall white dune was first to try and grab the tiny ship but
Diver
exploded through it and the ship bounced away from the ground.

A loud roar burst from under the ship, and Alex felt his stomach churn as if they were falling. Before them, a spray of white crystals filled the air.

Alex braced for the inevitable impact and looked at Mary. She was looking at him and smiling.

“I love you too,” she said.

But the impact didn’t come immediately. He looked back at the screen and saw that they were still climbing, and the roar behind them continued along with the feeling of weightlessness.

Then he noticed that every light on the dash panel was lit.

“FULL POWER RESTORED,” said the computer.

Alex and Mary were dumfounded. The ship had bounced off a huge dune as the power came back. The roar Alex heard was
Diver
’s main drive engines coming to life, and the sense of falling was caused by their Null-Gee field.

The ship continued to rise away from the snow field as Alex, in disbelief, examined the controls. “Computer,” he shouted. “Damage report!”

“FORWARD SKID PLATE HAS MISALIGNED TWO DEGREES.”.

“Can we use it to land safely?”

“UNKNOWN,” said the emotionless voice.

Alex and Mary’s jaws hung open in wonder. “Computer ...” said Alex. “Any other problems I should know about?”

“POWER CELL 14 IS AT 90% AND SHOULD BE REPLACED OR REPAIRED ... COURSE CORRECTION REQUIRED ... COURSE UNKNOWN.”.”

Alex was glad to see the inky sky of Mars through the cockpit windows again. He unstrapped his harness and reached out to Mary. She took his hand eagerly. “Where should we go?” he asked.

“If we’re damaged ... I guess Earth will have to wait,” she said.

Alex asked the computer to locate and set a course for the nearest base. And in a few seconds the computer announced its choice.

“ISIDIS SPACEPORT,” it said. “ESTIMATED ARRIVAL ... SEVEN MINUTES AT FULL POWER.”

“Make it so,” ordered Alex, winking at Mary.

“Well, aren’t we getting cocky, Jean Luc?” she said, grinning back at him.

Alex laughed. “I used to watch those old shows over and over, back on Io. But that was before I met you.”

“We’d better radio Tharsis to tell them we’re okay,” said Mary.

“I thought you already did that,” replied Alex. “But ... okay. They should hear it from me.”

After contacting the base and calling off the rescue ships, Alex announced they would be seeking emergency landing assistance at Isidis.

Recalling that it was a need for repairs that brought them to Mars, Alex laughed. “I’m really getting the mechanic’s tour of Mars,” he said.

Diver
continued to streak through the skies of Mars, and after checking the ship’s systems several times, Alex’s confidence in the ship returned. He raised the viewscreen and directed the outboard cameras on the ship’s underbelly to rise from their secured position and examine the integrity of the hull. After careful scrutiny of the images, Alex saw only traces of ice still clinging in a few crevices. The rest had either blown away or been melted by the ship’s still warm polyceramic shielding.

He trained the camera on the forward skid plate and saw that it was seated at a slight angle. Alex thought about their situation. A moment ago they were facing doom. Now they were in the same situation they had been in when they arrived on Mars; a nick ahead of the law and in need of repairs.

He looked again at the bent skid plate. Maybe they wouldn’t need it. But maybe they would. Of course he wasn’t the only one to have a say in this.

“What do you want to do, Mary?” he asked.

“I want to go to Earth. You know that.”

“The computer wants us to get repaired.” Alex looked at the view screen and touched the console. A map of Mars showed them gaining on Isidis Base. Their telemetry was already being generated from the base.

“There’s a lot of chatter on the radio,” said Mary, touching the spot on her temple where her augmentation tabs used to sit. “We’re the talk of the planet.”

“Well, that’s great. Just when we are trying to slip off to Earth with as little flap as possible. Now we’re in the spotlight. Call me Mr Lucky.”

Mary nodded. “By now old Professor Johnny knows we’ve stiffed him, I’ll bet.” She stroked her snow white hair nervously. “He still has power. He gave us this ship and he can take it away just as easily.”

“He was going to steal our discovery,” argued Alex. “Dingers to him, I say.”

“The question is, what if he says dingers to us?” argued Mary. “I’m a Sensor. To some in the Corporation, I’m property.”

“And to MarsCorp, I’m scum,” said Alex.

“No,” said Mary, thoughtfully. “It’s on Io that you’re scum. Here, you’re a stranger.”