The vessel jolted and shuddered as it bulled its way out of the ocean. Deirdre felt as if the sea was trying to keep them, hold them back, prevent them from getting away.
And then they were soaring through Jupiter’s wide, clear atmosphere, the curve of the planet’s vast bulk barely noticeable even when they were halfway to the clouds. Her eyes glued to the screens’ displays, Deirdre saw a clutch of Clarke’s Medusas drifting placidly off in the distance, colorful as old-fashioned hot-air balloons.
“Entering cloud deck,” said Dorn. The displays showed a dizzying swirl of colors and the vessel buffeted and jittered in the typhoon winds of Jupiter’s racing clouds. Andy gripped her tighter as Deirdre clung to him with one arm and reached for the console handgrips with the other. She saw that Max and Dorn were also grasping safety holds.
Suddenly the shaking and vibration stopped, as abruptly as a switch turning off, and the display screens showed the eternal black of space. Deirdre told the computer to increase its brightness gain and pinpoints of stars gleamed against the darkness.
“We’re in orbit,” Yeager said, his voice almost breathless with relief.
The curving bulk of Jupiter slid into view, huge, glowing with broad swaths of color. Just above its limb a single bright star glowed.
“That’s the station,” Andy said, relaxing his grip on her just a little. “We’re almost home.”
“But we’ll go back to them, won’t we?” said Deirdre, feeling as if she wanted to cry.
EPILOGUE
For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise.
DECOMPRESSION
This is worse than being in the ocean, Deirdre thought. She lay in the narrow decompression capsule, unable to move. It was like being in a coffin, an elaborate high-tech sarcophagus, too tight to shift her arms from her sides, its ridged plastic lid too low for her to lift her head. Worse than the bunks in
“Stay still,” the technicians had told her. “It’s best if you just lay absolutely still while we bring the pressure down.”
I have to stay still, she thought. There’s no room to move in here. She was still breathing perfluorocarbon, still bathed in the cold, slimy liquid. Eight hours, the technicians had said. Eight hours minimum.
“You’ll sleep through most of it,” one of the technicians had said. “Just relax and sleep.”
Wonderful advice, Deirdre thought. Just relax and sleep. Might as well, there’s nothing else to do while I’m in here. Sleep. They’re injecting a sedative into the perfluorocarbon, she knew. I wonder how they can determine the proper dosage? What if it’s not enough? Or too much?
Her thoughts drifted to the leviathans. Those enormous animals. The one in particular that had tried to communicate with them. I wonder what he’s doing now? I wonder if he’s thinking about us.
Without consciously realizing it Deirdre slipped into sleep, dreaming of the leviathans, floating deep in the Jovian ocean and talking with the leviathan as normally and easily as she would speak to Andy or Max. The leviathan was telling her about himself, what it was like to live in that deep, dark sea, all the secrets of life in—
“Are you awake, Dee?”
Deirdre’s eyes popped open and she saw Andy, Max, and Dorn leaning over the edge of her decompression capsule, beaming down at her. The capsule’s top had been swung back. And she was breathing normal air!
“I was dreaming,” she said.
“How do you feel?” Corvus asked.
Blinking, she replied, “Okay … I think.”
Dr. Mandrill’s dark, puffy face appeared between Yeager and Dorn. “Your life signs are quite good now, Ms. Ambrose,” he said, with a bright toothy smile.
“Now?” Deirdre caught his unsaid meaning. “You mean they weren’t before?”
Mandrill’s smile narrowed a bit. “There was some damage to the myocardium, very minor—”
“That’s the heart muscle,” Yeager interjected.
“My heart?”
“Very minor damage,” Mandrill emphasized. “Caused by the pressure, of course. Stem cell therapy is repairing the damage quite nicely.”
Without asking, Deirdre began to push herself up to a sitting position. Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn all reached into the capsule to help her.
“Do you feel strong enough to stand?” Dr. Mandrill asked her.
“I … think so.”
“How do you feel, Dee?” Corvus asked.
She thought a moment, then replied, “Hungry.”
Mandrill’s smile returned to full wattage. “That is a good sign! A very good sign!”
It took more than an hour of sensor scans and long lists of medical questionings, but at last Dr. Mandrill agreed that Deirdre could leave the clinic with her three friends.
“To the galley,” Yeager commanded, pointing like a general ordering a charge. “I want a real steak!”
Her legs felt a little wobbly, but Deirdre went with them toward the elevator that led up to the first wheel and the station’s galley. Corvus wrapped his arm around her waist as they strode along the passageway.
“How are you guys?” Deirdre asked. “Dorn, are you okay?”
The cyborg nodded gravely. “My systems are functioning properly.”
“Andy?”
“Fine. No more headache.”
“And you, Max?”
Yeager frowned. “Lumbar stenosis. I’ve had it for years, from what the medics say. Didn’t really bother me until we got squeezed by the pressure down there.”
“Is it all right now?” Deirdre asked.
“It aches. Mandrill says they can work it out with microsurgery.”
As they entered the elevator cab, Deirdre looked into each of their faces. “Then we’re all okay?”
“Yep.”
“Pretty much.”
“I’ll be fine,” Yeager said, “once I tear into that steak.”
DEBRIEFING
To Deirdre’s surprise, Grant Archer was standing in the passageway when the elevator doors opened at the
