Leviathans of Jupiter

Deirdre was dreaming about the dolphins. She was a dolphin herself, swimming easily in a world filled with fish, sunlight streaming from above, water sparkling and warm.

“Ms. Ambrose? Can you hear me?”

The voice was gentle but annoying. She dived deeper into the sea, searching for the bottom where the tasty squid jetted among the rocks and coral formations.

“Ms. Ambrose. Open your eyes, please.”

Go away, Deirdre thought. Leave me alone, won’t you?

“Dee,” a different voice called. “It’s me, Andy. Can you wake up now?”

Andy. She pictured his boyish, grinning, slightly crooked face. Reluctantly Deirdre opened her eyes. It took an effort: Her lids were gummy, as if someone had pasted them together.

“Hey, that’s good! How d’you feel?”

Blinking, she made out a fuzzy form leaning over her. A few more quick flickers of her lids and Andy Corvus’s face came into focus. He was grinning in his lopsided, easygoing way.

“Hi! Welcome back.”

Dorn’s half-metal form came into view. “Welcome to station Gold.”

“We’re here?” Deirdre’s throat felt parched, her voice was scratchy.

“We are always here,” Dorn said gravely, “wherever that may be.”

Andy said, “What he means is—”

“Never mind what he means.” Max Yeager’s burly form pushed into view, behind the other two. “How are you, gorgeous? How do you feel?”

Swiftly taking stock, she said shakily, “Okay, I guess.” Then, stronger, “Fine, actually. I feel fine. Like I’ve had a good, long nap.”

“Nine days, just about,” said Corvus.

Deirdre pushed herself up on her elbows and the thin sheet covering her slipped away. With a shock, she realized she was wearing nothing. Corvus gulped as she grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her chin. Dorn looked away. Yeager turned flame red.

A medical orderly, young and male, offered Deirdre a small cup of water. Clutching the sheet with one hand as she sat up on the bed, Deirdre accepted the water gratefully. The bed rose automatically to support her.

“We have fruit juices, if you prefer,” said the orderly.

“This will do, thank you.”

Glancing around as she drank, she saw that they were obviously no longer in Australia’s pocket-sized infirmary. This was an actual room, with walls instead of flimsy partitions and display screens that showed vivid swirls and streams of color. Those are Jupiter’s cloud tops, Deirdre recognized. They must be real-time views.

“So we’re on station Gold,” she said.

“It’s big,” Corvus replied, grinning widely. “A lot bigger than the torch ship. Got lots of labs, workshops, even an auditorium where they hold conferences and such.”

Yeager said, “The living quarters aren’t as spiffy as Australia’s, but they’re not all that bad.”

“Wait until you go out to the observation deck,” said Dorn, “and see Jupiter close-up. It’s overwhelming.”

Deirdre nodded. “You guys will have to show me around the station.”

All three of them nodded happily.

* * *

Sitting in a virtual reality chamber, her face masked by molecule-thin goggles and a speaker bud in one ear, Katherine Westfall was getting a tour of Gold from the station’s director, Grant Archer.

Archer had been at the arrival lounge’s airlock to welcome her aboard the station.

“We’ll take care of your staff, Mrs. Westfall,” he had told her. “Once you’re settled in, I’d like to give you a tour of the station.”

Except for his silvery little beard and close-cropped hair, Grant Archer appeared deceptively youthful. Good shoulders, Westfall saw, and steady brown eyes that looked as if they could be stubborn.

“My people will see to my luggage,” she had said. “Why don’t we start the tour right now?”

Archer had smiled at her, a warm, personable smile. “That will be fine.” He gestured down the passageway leading from the arrival lounge. “This way, then.”

She was surprised when he led her to a small, dimly lit chamber, empty except for a high-backed chair standing in its center. It looked to her more like an interrogation room than anything else. Except that its walls were covered with gauges and dials and there was a bulky electronics console in one corner.

“The station’s pretty big,” he said, leading her to the chair. “We’ve learned that going through it in virtual reality is a lot easier than actually walking into every nook and cranny.”

“Oh,” she said as she sat in the chair. It felt cold, hard.

“I’ll run the simulation myself,” Archer said, going to the console. She had to turn around in the chair to see him leaning over the console’s desk front and switching on the power. A row of green lights sprang up.

Archer opened a drawer and pulled out what looked to her like a limp cloth and a tiny blob of plastic.

“If you’ll slip the viewing screens over your eyes and put the speaker into one of your ears, we’ll be ready to go.”

Wordlessly Katherine did as he asked. A pang of alarm surged through her. Suddenly she was alone in darkness. She couldn’t see a thing.

But then she heard Archer’s calm tenor voice: “Okay, everything’s in the green. Here we go. Welcome to research station Thomas Gold.”

STATION GOLD

Colors swirled briefly before her eyes. They coalesced to show Katherine Westfall a view of the station as it orbited the giant planet Jupiter. She seemed to be hanging in space, yet she felt perfectly warm and comfortable; the solidity of the chair she was sitting upon felt reassuring.

She saw that the station consisted of three wheels, one on top of another, connected by a central spine. The outer skins of the wheels were studded with viewport bubbles, airlock hatches, antennas, sensors, and other paraphernalia that Katherine could not identify. As she drifted closer to the orbiting station she could see elevator cabs running up and down the central shaft. The entire station was spinning slowly. Of course, she told herself: That’s how they get a feeling of gravity inside, even though it’s only one-sixth of normal.

Archer’s calm, steady voice sounded in her ear. “Station Gold originally was just one wheel, the one on top. We’ve named that one after the station’s original director, Dr. Li Zhang Wo. The other two wheels are too new to have been named yet.”

That’s where most of his funding has been spent, Westfall said to herself. On construction.

Archer’s voice droned on, “The first wheel is now devoted completely to research operations. We have teams working on the four big moons of Jupiter, the Galilean satellites…”

And Westfall saw a building on the ice surface of Europa, built like a fortress in that frozen wilderness. The sky was dark and empty except for a scattering of stars. Archer’s voice explained that glare from sunlight reflecting off the ice blotted out all but the brightest of stars. The scene looked bleak and cold and somehow frightening to Katherine. She shuddered involuntarily.

“The surface structure has to be heavily insulated not only against the cold,” Archer was explaining, “but also against the tremendous radiation flux from Jupiter’s Van Allen belts.”

At that, she saw the immense multihued planet climbing above Europa’s ice-covered horizon, like a huge all-encompassing monster rising out of the black infinity. Jupiter was enormous, streaked with ribbons of color that