Jupiter's Reef (35 page)

“This system, vast though it is, seems organized,” said Professor Baltadonis. “All the computer and physical models of Jupiter have predicted a vortex, a Great Red Spot, occurring naturally at this latitude. It’s a super cell like a hurricane. So no one, except Alex, of course, ever dreamed life would be here. Oh, lots of people tried to postulate life on Jupiter and gas giant planets of its kind. But a storm three times the size of Earth is not a likely place to look for it.

“Now that I’ve seen the reef for myself,” he continued. “I wonder where the life came from. I’m wondering what that sample Tony nearly gave his life for will tell us.”

“If the vortex has been here millions of years, that’s long enough at least for a reef to get formed, isn’t it? Not to interrupt your lecture.” Alex winked at Johnny.

“Not at all. I’m just musing. Thinking out loud,” said Professor Baltadonis. “I think it’s reasonable to expect there’s a large-scale structure at work, here.”

““That’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Alex. “Mary and I observed that when we were here the first time. You saw the data.”

“Of course. I didn’t doubt your data, Alex,” said Johnny. “But seeing it for myself ...”

“It’s a mind fuck,” said Tony. “Right?”

Baltadonis raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I would put it differently.” He looked over at Tony and smiled, but Tony didn’t return the gesture.

“You were talking about organization. Keep talking about that. Maybe it’ll help us get out of here,” said Tony.

Alex pulled the stick hard to the left as the corridor they followed took a sharp turn. As he piloted the ship, he thought about the organization of the reef. He and Mary had long ago decided that the air currents throughout the reef system flowed in an organized way, lifting the reef as a unit. He wondered if there was some kind of hub to the system.

As they rounded the bend in the tunnel, Johnny saw something off in the distance that brightened in the ship’s floodlights. “That’s new,” he said. He asked Alex to slow the ship.

Alex had seen them too. “They look like bubbles,” he said.

As the ship neared the strange bubbles, Mary squirmed a bit in her chair and said that they looked like blisters or eggs of some kind.

“I don’t like them,” she added.

Milky yellow in color, there seemed to be something dark moving inside them. As
Diver
’s lights focused on them, facets inside sparkled with soft colors.

“Attractive,” said Johnny. “They do look like eggs.”

“They’re moving,” said Mary. “At first I thought their sparkle was caused by the movement of our lights but ...”

“Are the cameras running?” interrupted Tony.

“Always,” said Alex.

Perhaps a dozen meters off
Diver
’s nose five sparkling bubbles, each one at least two meters wide, clung to the reef wall. Alex could see that several hair-like fibers held them in place.

“They’re spotted,” said Mary. “Little blue green spots.”

“Like baby gas bag balloons,” said Tony.

The ship continued to near the edge of the reef, albeit slowly. Alex found himself so mesmerized by the iridescent colors that he let the ship drift close to the reef.

Diver
’s gravity field enclosed the bubbles. The reaction was violent. Each one burst open, spraying shards of glassy material.

“Dingers,” said Alex, pulling hard on the drive stick. The ship responded quickly and they moved into clear air.

“More damage,” said Alex.

“Bulls in a china shop,” offered Johnny.

“Never heard that,” said Mary, studying the fringes of the dark reef. She was looking for the clicker men. As usual, the human blunders precipitated a big reaction. Thousands of static chirps echoed inside her head. She knew there were a lot of them, and she knew they were out there and not too far away. But even her keen eyes couldn’t see them.

Mary remembered confronting the clicker men during their first visit to the reef. They had talked to her, she was sure of it. Tried to draw her out. It was as if they knew she could hear them. But when she’d broadcast to them, the clicker men didn’t respond. If they could communicate to her there was no way to tell. Ultimately she just dismissed their calls. They were like birds, dumb animals, she told herself. She clung to that thought. Perhaps to do otherwise might have cost her sanity.

On that trip, Alex had felt Mary’s torment when the clicker men called to her. He thought it was just a sound that relentlessly assaulted her senses. They were shrieking crows. No more.

Yet he knew inside that it was more.

Alex saw Mary watching the dark edges of the reef. “They’re not coming out this time, are they, Mary?”

Mary looked down and gently scratched her kitten’s neck. “No,” she said.

4
After what they called the “bubble incident” everyone was on edge. There had been no damage to the ship but the bizarre nature of the event had put them all on alert. Even Tony, still weary from his waltz with death, was watching the holographic image.

The tunnel had steadily widened and the clicker men that had been moving ahead, pacing the ship, seemed to vanish into the reef. The radar image superimposed over the normal one showed a large scale structure shaped like a flattened horn. Above them was a broad flat section of reef that glowed with the now familiar blue-green light. Its smooth surface texture contrasted with that of the uneven floor, nearly five hundred meters below.

The wind that pushed on the ship’s balloon array had weakened significantly. Alex used the ship’s power to keep them moving at a reasonable speed.

The cavern seemed to widen forever, and the vastness of the space they had entered prompted Johnny to suggest they were exploring one of the areas which lifted the reef and kept it floating at a certain altitude in the Great Red Spot.

“I keep picturing a flower,” said Johnny. “A huge flat flower.”

“I still like flowers,” said Mary darkly.

“Nawww, it should be something fun, like a pinwheel,” said Alex. “That’s for me. Whoopeee!”

“Or a meat grinder,” said Tony softly.

Alex looked over at Tony. He was sitting sideways in his chair with his elbows on his knees.

“Dingers, Tony, you survived it,” said Alex. “Think about that.”

“I guess,” replied Tony. “I’d rather not think about any of it.”

“You can’t forget the thing that held your legs and pushed you into its nest,” said Mary, looking at Tony sympathetically.

Tony looked at Mary blankly.

“Exactly,” said Tony. “I was going to say that.”

“My intuitive streak. It’s spooky at times,” said Mary, with a demure smile. “Alex is the same way.”

“I knew what he was going to say, too,” said Johnny. “It was obvious.”

Alex kept his mouth shut. A long minute passed as everyone listened to the whistles, chirps, and insect-like sounds that filled the air outside the ship. Far in the background, blending with the static crackling everyone knew to be lightning, was the sound of the clicker men.

“What do you say we take her down and look at the floor of this place?” said Alex, breaking the silence.

“I was going to suggest that,” said Johnny.

“See? Mary’s not the only one who can read minds,” laughed Alex.

5
One could imagine glowing clouds. But there was only mist and the endless reef.

Here, in the bowels of the reef, the crew of
Diver
explored something that looked like an ocean floor; a vast rolling dark plain, revealed only by a tiny pool of lights.

“We’re like deep sea explorers,” said Johnny. He was back inside his bubble taking measurements of the surrounding air’s chemistry while recording a thermal study of a finite section of reef. There was little for the Professor to do manually. His verbal instructions to the ship’s computer had taken care of that. Johnny was simply observing and making sure that the data was being recorded.

Alex had fallen into a rhythm. He could have let the computer fly the ship. But he wanted to do something. Besides, he liked piloting
Diver
. It was like an old friend.

He knew that he could ask the computer to take them out of there and it would find a way out. But Alex knew they weren’t leaving for a while and he had a hunch that Johnny wanted more samples. But he hadn’t said so yet.

Mary had dozed off and her kitten was again tethered to the rear wall of the cabin, in close proximity to its litter box. There it played with a squeezer top that had strayed into his territory. Tony watched as the kitten demonstrated how a tiger stalks its prey.

Suddenly Mary opened her eyes.

“
Cornwall
,” she said. “A message from Stubbs.”

“Stubbs on Earth?” said Johnny.

Captain Wysor’s voice could be heard amid lots of static on the cabin monitors. “Lo Mates,” he said in a jovial voice: “... Stubbs’ strapped to a hi res data down load. Yer muti’d at 115 triple k. You makin’ this, friends?”

“I’m getting a data transmission,” said Tony.

“What I said, sports,” continued Wysor. “Be awares the solar flutey is gettin’ thick up her’n’orbit.”

“Gettin’ you on the ol’ go round is makin’ less sense every orbit,” said the voice of Matt Howarth. “We’re getting some rads up here. The sol storm pumped a lot of juice into this region, The last blast passed in a week but the rads remain. The Gannys want to split and come back later if you haven’t come out by then.”

“Is that what Stubbs is about?” asked Johnny.

“News from home,” said Matt.

“War in the Atlantic. Gold recovery in old New York, the usual beat,” said the voice of Connie Tsu.

Alex recalled his brief tour of Earth and the episode with the Atlantians when they had flown above the waves of the North Atlantic Ocean. Connie’s mention of war went a long way toward explaining the strange craft, bristling with weapons, that had come unexpectedly out of the sea to look
Diver
over.

When he looked to his right to remind Mary of the incident, her eyes met his and he knew she could hear him. “I wondered why those strange ships were so hostile to us over the ocean,” she said, looking back at the Professor. “Nobody said anything about a war.”

“They told you to stick to a flight path and you didn’t really do that, did you?” said Johnny.

Johnny didn’t wait for an answer.

“How much radiation are you taking, Matt?” he said in a loud voice.

“We’re okay right now. But it comes in clumps and Jupiter’s rad belt system is getting ripe. It helps keep the rads off us but it’s cumulative. Plus, Captain Wysor is worried about the hull. Its got an older hull. The polyceramic bonds are weak.”

“So you won’t be checking in?” asked Alex. “Is that the drift.”

“I’s lookin’ ta use der cash for this’n to plug the hull,” said the voice of Wysor. “Stormin’ ol’ solly beat us to it, yeah? We have tenny four to get to Ganny town. Sooo, knock you on the knickers, ’lex,”

The voices from
Cornwall
were fading amid a growing background of static on the cabin speakers.

Matt said they would remain in contact for a while. And then he let everyone aboard
Cornwall
say some words to Tony. The statements that followed from Connie, Jeanne, and several of the Ganny crew testified to their having seen the recordings of Tony’s accident. Each spoke in respectful tones. Alex appreciated Jeanne Warren’s brief but eloquent remark.

“You show me a lot, Tony,” she’d said.

Tony listened to them all without expression. Alex thought the words would help improve Tony’s spirits but the opposite seemed to be true. “Thanks,” was all he said. Alex wasn’t sure anyone aboard the Ganny ship heard him.

“It’s been tough for Tony,” said Alex. “Like a dream. You know. The less said...”

“Losin’ th’ blight’n signal,
Diver
,” said the garbled voice of Captain Wysor.

Moments later the voices from the Ganny ship drowned in an ocean of static.

Alex switched off the cabin speakers.

“A little quiet might be in order,” he said, returning his attention to the reef floor ahead. Three floodlights spread a wide beam on the froth of undulating material that teemed with life. Strings of lights began to emerge, here and there, from the mounds of dark reef. The strings floated aimlessly, in spiral patterns. Alex pointed to the worms of light, but everyone was watching them already.

Some of them were blue-green, like many of the other reef dwellers, but others came out of the murk sporting bright red lights. These worms were large and as one spiraled past a cabin window Alex saw that it was like a long tube with air trapped inside, separating chambers whose links contained membranes that glowed. If the thing had a head or tail, Alex couldn’t tell.

But Alex found himself disoriented as he watched the spiraling worm. Behind the writhing worm, the reef was a ghostly landscape rendered in infrared light, radar tracings, and directly in front of them, a pool of visible light provided by
Diver
’s floods.

Alex tried to imagine how Tony felt. To everyone else they were surrounded by a dreamscape, but to Tony it was, no doubt, a living nightmare.

Alex had been at death’s door several times. He had helped console IoCorp miners who had been struck down and people who’d been rescued as they were taking their last breath of canned air. But he had never known someone who’d experienced anything like what had happened to Sciarra.

Now, watching the strange floorshow of spiraling light strings, he tried to think of something to say; something that would lighten the load for Tony. He couldn’t turn off the image. Nor could he order Tony to drug himself to sleep. They were getting deeper in the reef and the expertise of everyone on board was needed.

Mary pivoted her chair to face Tony.

“I heard of a man who was lost six days under the Europan ice mantle,” she said, putting on her tabs so she too could filter out the static of the reef. “He had a beacon. They knew where he was. And he had food and water and recycled air to last a month.”

Tony looked up from his control panel and acknowledged Mary. She waited a moment to see if he wanted her to continue.

“What happened?” asked Tony.