Jupiter's Reef (37 page)

“Something I said?” asked Tony as he crawled on hands and knees to his seat.

Mary was secure in her seat when it happened. She watched Alex helplessly as he tried to control the ship. It tumbled and rolled crazily, like a ship in a maelstrom.

“Hold on, Mary,” said Alex as he gripped the stick. “Can’t see which way we’re going. How can I steer it? Computer. Emergency Alpha One. Stabilize the ship!” he called out in desperation.”

Alex felt the stick moving in his hand but even the computer couldn’t prevent the mysterious black cloud from sweeping them along with it. Finally the ship stopped rolling and righted itself.

“What is it?” asked Alex. “Johnny, can you tell?”

No reply came from Professor Baltadonis.

Mary looked over at Johnny. He was slumped in his chair.

“Johnny?” she said.

She saw his hand move, then he groaned unhappily. “I wasn’t buckled in,” he said. “Hit my head. I’m okay. I think.”

There was no letup to the storm. It carried the ship along in its violent grip while Alex switched off the virtual display and looked around the cabin.

“Everyone buckle up tight,” he shouted. ”I don’t think this is going to let up soon. Johnny, what’s your condition?”

“I’ll have a headache,” answered the Professor. “But I’m okay.”

“What’s on radar?”

“Avalanche.” said Johnny. “I just played it back. A piece of the reef broke away.”

The rocking of the ship continued as the motion gradually subsided and the air around the ship began to clear. But now the sky was full of creatures of all shapes and sizes. Many of them were glowing, mostly in red. Some seemed to be flying while others were falling. Alex noticed several things that looked like flying fishes. Others looked like flowers scattered in the wind.

“PRIORITY ALPHA ONE. STABILIZING.” said the voice of the computer, barely audible over the din of things hitting the hull.

“Took ya long enough,” shouted Alex.

Through the splatter-stained cabin window he saw a dark shape coming toward them. It was huge and seemed to be not one but a group of objects linked together, each one perhaps bigger than a house.

Johnny saw it on radar. “What is that?” he said.

A laugh burst from Alex who stared wide-eyed at the window. “What’s any of this shit?”

There was a loud booming thump as part of the grey featureless monster glanced off
Diver
’s balloon package. For a moment the ship gave a sickening lurch. Then, whatever it was vanished into the darkness.

While this was happening scores of creatures loomed in the ship’s floodlights, then they too were lost in the darkness.

“An alien menagerie in ruins,” said Mary.

Some things looked like broken bottles and others like mechanisms with broken parts hanging uselessly while other parts tugged and groped at chunks of reef debris that fell nearby.

The impacts on the hull, which moments before had been nearly deafening, were beginning to subside. Without apologies Johnny switched on the virtual bubble.

“If we’re taking a ride, we may as well see where the heck we’re going.” he said.

Alex didn’t argue. He sighed and slumped back in his seat. “The instruments say we’re still going down, Johnny. Straight down.”

“I know, said Johnny. “Look at that ... are those starfish?”

But before Johnny could get a good look at his starfish, they too were gone in the gloom.

“Damn,” he shouted. “It looked like it had green flames shooting from its stars.”

“The camera’s getting all this,” said Tony. “If we ever get outa here, maybe we can review the data.”

Alex had been paying more attention to the readouts on the dash than the menagerie outside. Once again, the ship had come through with flying colors.

“I’ve been checking ship’s systems,” said Alex.

“So have I,” said Tony.

“What’ya think, Sciarra,” the Professor asked. “Will we make it?”

“We’re down two cells,” he said. “That’s a one percent power loss.”

“Ouch!” said Alex. He winked at Mary and smiled but she didn’t smile back. Even though he seemed to be acting like a schoolboy on an amusement park ride, she knew he was terrified. She forced a smile to her lips and tried to make her eyes join in, but she herself was too afraid to give him comfort.

Alex sighed again, then his eyes returned to the window.

The debris was now suspended around them in freefall. And the radar began to show that a pit had opened beneath them. It was an immense opening in the reef floor below, perhaps a hundred kilometers wide.

Alex remembered being flushed to the bottom of the reef during their last visit. It was his opinion that the clicker men had been the engineers of that one, but this collapse was just too big. Kilometers of reef were involved. But
Diver
seemed almost invulnerable to the assault. Once again their advantage was sheer mass. Apparently Johnny was right. Nothing in the reef seemed to weigh much. And it made sense. This was Jupiter after all; the biggest gravity well in the Solar System other than the sun itself.

2
They were falling with the great rush of air that the reef had taken with it. Alex sat up and took the stick in his hand. Immediately the ship yielded control to him.

“Maybe we should take some steps, huh, Professor?” he said, pulling back on the stick slightly. The ship tipped backward slightly and then Alex pushed the stick forward.
Diver
’s powerful engines came on full, propelling the ship laterally through the debris. In front of them lightning cut an amber swath across the horizon, knifing downward through raining reef material in the distance.

“Dingers,” said Alex. “Sometimes I forget how big this place is.”

“There’s no use even trying to comprehend it,” said Tony.

“You’re right,” said Professor Baltadonis. “We’re used to thinking on a certain scale. Five Earths would fit in the Great Red Spot system. No doubt the total area of the reef is larger, maybe even many times larger than the biological layer of Earth.”

Alex and Mary remembered their flight across planet Earth. The canyons. Its vast oceans. Alex might not have found it overwhelming, but to Mary, who had grown up on Mars, Earth was much bigger than she’d imagined. Its landscapes hardly seemed curved and she concluded that people from Earth grow up on a world that seems flat as the top of a table. But this ... this was flat.

Johnny’s radar data was being refined, moment by moment, and the computer was adding that data to the holographic image that surrounded Alex and Mary. The panorama provided by the radar echoes was becoming indistinguishable from the infrared image.

Part of the reef had torn open or collapsed, and
Diver
had been swept downward. It was now several layers down in the reef and they were nearing what Johnny said “must be the approximate center of reef.” By his reckoning he thought they were only a few hundred kilometers from it. “A thousand at most,” he added.

“Is that where we’re headed?” said Alex. “If that’s been the plan all along, then it’s news to me.”

“Not at all, Alex,” said Johnny. “In fact I can’t be sure I’m right. Not without confirmation from
Cornwall
.”

“Should I adjust course?” asked Alex. “I’m sort of headed toward that arm of the reef the radar shows in the distance. I thought we’d be flying over it a few minutes ago, now I guess we’re going under it?”

“We’re still falling,” said Johnny. “The whole air mass is sinking. What choice do we have but to sink with it?”

“What choice?” said Alex. “Well, at any point we can ditch the balloons and blast our way out of here.”

“Right through the reef?” asked Johnny, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s low mass stuff,” said Alex. “It might be risky but we could try.”

“Are we in trouble?” asked Johnny.

“No. Not really,” said Alex.

“Well, I wouldn’t recommend that. And I’m not so sure we wouldn’t get stuck. Besides, there’s a lot more science to be served up by the reef.”

“That’s an odd way to put it,” said Mary. “Too foodish.”

“Hot science on a plate,” said Alex. “And we’re in the stew.”

Johnny laughed. “Judging from the stuff that’s floating around us, I’d say that’s an apt description.”

The banter began to wear on Alex. He unhitched his seatbelt and stood up.

“So we’re in for the long haul,” he said, stretching his back. “In that case I need some food. Mary, you’re co-pilot. You drive for a while.”

“Computer,” said Mary. “Priority Alpha two. Steady as she goes.” Then she unhitched herself from her own seat and followed Alex to the food panel. “The ham salad is pretty good,” she said.

Alex watched the holographic scenery out of the corner of his eye as he and Mary ordered their sandwiches. At any moment he expected Johnny to protest the pilot and co-pilot’s seat being empty, but Johnny seemed content with the situation,
or
, thought Alex,
he was too engrossed in his virtual world to notice
.

Mary looked to see if Tony or Johnny was watching, then she touched Alex’s hand.

“How far is he going to take this?” she whispered.

Alex bit into his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

“Magellan, there, is the one who says when the mission is over,” he said, pointing his chin toward Johnny. “Not me.”

“We came for samples,” grumbled Mary. “Now we have them. And getting them nearly cost us one of our crew.”

Alex shrugged. “Aren’t you talking to the wrong person?”

“I’m talking to the Captain of this ship, Alex.”

Alex smiled. “Captain. I like the sound of that. But even captains have to yield to higher authority, don’t they?”

Mary let out a sigh and turned her attention to her kitten, who was asleep with its head dangling out of its litter box. She bent over and gently caressed its forehead with the back of her index finger. It let out a little sound but didn’t wake up. “I can’t imagine how Babies slept through that catastrophe,” said Mary. “He’s a brave little thing, isn’t he?”

“Like his mom,” said Alex with a grin.

Alex knew Mary wasn’t feeling very brave. He guessed she had counted surviving the avalanche as perhaps the last break they would get. He watched her slide into the co-pilot’s seat and lean back in disgust. She wasn’t complaining but her body language was clear.

Alex had had enough of the reef, too. He wanted to speak to Johnny about leaving but he knew that without a good reason Johnny would never agree. So he too went back to his seat.

When he looked again at the instruments he was pleased to see that they had stopped their downward motion and were rising slightly. Ahead of them an arm of the reef protruded toward the ship, perhaps a thousand meters away.

Alex looked back at Johnny. “Where to, Professor?” he asked.

Johnny had apparently been anticipating the question. “Under that outcropping, Alex. I want to go deeper. But stay on this heading.”

Alex squinted at the holographic imagery that surrounded him. Far ahead of them, below the outcropping that they were moving toward, was what appeared to be another tunnel. “I see a tunnel or passageway on the radar, Johnny,” he said. “I assume ...”

“Yes,” said Johnny. “That’s the way.”

“The way to where?” asked Tony. “Haven’t we seen enough of this place?”

Mary looked at Alex and smiled, but the smile faded as something in the distance caught her eye.

There was no mistaking what she saw. Alex recognized the squid-like shapes instantly. Hundreds of clicker men darted out from under the outcropping and headed directly toward
Diver
. Out of the corner of his eye Alex saw Mary put on her tabs. He looked at her questioningly.

“Don’t turn on the cabin speakers,” she said.

3
“Are you seeing this, Professor?” said Alex.

“They don’t show up on the radar,” answered Johnny. “But they’re bright in the infrared. Must have their tempers up, eh?”

The cloud of clicker men seemed to be on a collision course with
Diver
. Alex watched their approach and gritted his teeth.

“Looks like a full assault,” he said.

“Have you seen this large a group before?” asked Tony, lifting himself out of his seat for a better view.

“No. Not this many,” said Mary. “There must be a thousand of them.”

“Just let ’em come, Alex,” said Johnny. “See what they do.”

The cloud of clicker men divided in the middle and swept past the ship. For just a moment they were everywhere Alex looked. Then they were gone.

A straggler zoomed past
Diver
, then it circled back to investigate. They watched it spiral around the ship a few times, then pause and hover for a moment. It luffed its velvety wings like a swimmer treading water, displaying its white body and the scarlet lining of its flowing, blanket-like wings. Then it suddenly collapsed into a streamlined shape and vanished in the same direction the rest of the pack had gone.

“What was that about?” asked Alex, wiping beads of sweat from his brow.

“No idea,” said Mary, taking off her tabs. She listened for a moment and shrugged. “They’re quite far away now and above us.”

“My guess is that they’re checking on the damage to the reef,” said Johnny. “Like rescuers to the scene of a disaster.”

Alex switched on the cabin speakers. The sound of the multitude of clicker men was there, but far away.

Tony had gotten out of his seat and was standing next to Alex. He listened to the sounds of the reef for a moment, then looked at Mary. “How can you tell the direction they went?” he asked.

Mary swiveled her chair to face Tony. “I have two plates in my skull. One on either side. They’re my receptors. My brain processes each side separately so I get stereo reception.”

“You can tell if the source is above or below?” said Tony after a moment’s thought. “I don’t see how.”

“It’s something my brain sorts out,” said Mary. “I don’t know how.”

“Like a second set of ears,” said Alex.

Following Johnny’s directive, Alex steered
Diver
toward the cavern mouth under the protruding ledge of reef. As they got closer the ship’s lights revealed the entrance to be wider than it had appeared on radar, so Alex relaxed a bit.