eddied and swirled while she watched, suddenly gasping for breath.
“Of course,” Archer’s cool, unruffled voice continued, “the real work on Europa goes on beneath the ice mantle, in the buried ocean.”
Katherine watched submersibles nosing through the dark waters, their lights illuminating a nightmare world of long stringy swaying things, dead white, tentacle-like arms waving in the currents. Sheets of rubbery expanses floated into the light and out again, as if trying to flee to the safety of darkness.
“There’s plenty of life in the oceans of Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Most of it is comparable to terrestrial life-forms such as algae, plankton, kelp, and such. All the forms we’ve found so far are autotrophic, like green plants on Earth, although they don’t use sunlight as their energy source. They produce their own foodstuffs using the heat energy from the moon’s gravitational flexing as it orbits Jupiter.”
On and on Archer explained. Though she knew perfectly well that she was sitting safe and warm in the VR chamber, Katherine Westfall felt jittery, almost frightened at the frigid and utterly alien worlds she was experiencing. Even when the scene shifted to Io with its colorful volcanic eruptions of bright molten sulfur, she felt cold and frighteningly alone.
Abruptly the scene changed again to show an ugly, irregular, pockmarked chunk of rock floating in the emptiness of space.
“Some of our researchers are studying the smaller moons of Jupiter, as well,” Archer explained. “They’ve identified seventy-three of them so far. Most of them are asteroids or cometary bodies that have fallen into Jupiter’s huge gravity well and been pulled into orbits around the planet.”
The scene shifted to show Jupiter’s colorful, churning cloud tops again.
“Occasionally an asteroidal or cometary body is pulled into Jupiter itself,” Archer narrated. Westfall saw an oblong chunk of what looked like dirty ice tumbling through space, heading smack into the clouds, a trail of vapor boiling off it as it fell. “Less than two months ago Comet McDaniel-Lloyd was pulled into the planet.”
The comet disappeared into the bright-colored clouds. Then the region brightened briefly with what might have been an explosion below the top of the cloud deck.
“The comet exploded with the force of thousands of megatons,” Archer was saying, still as calm as a grandfather reading children’s stories. “We are, of course, studying the effects the explosion has had on the local ecology.”
Once more she saw the three-wheeled station. “The station’s orbit is close enough to Jupiter so that we’re below the most intense radiation of the Van Allen belts. Our second wheel is taken up by the commercial gas scooping operations that extract fusion fuels such as helium-three out of the upper layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere and sell them to fusion power companies on Earth, the Moon, and elsewhere in the solar system. For more than twenty years, Jupiter has been the main energy source for the human race’s fusion power systems.”
Westfall saw a sleek, bullet-shaped vessel detach itself from the station’s middle wheel and hurtle downward toward the colorful cloud tops of the giant planet.
“The scoopships are remotely controlled, of course, by personnel in the station.” The view changed to show a team of men and women in sky blue coveralls sitting at a row of consoles.
“The fusion operation consists of remote operators, maintenance and service personnel, and the usual corps of administrators and directors,” Archer was saying, as if reading from a prepared script. “Without these scooping operations, fusion powerplants throughout the solar system would be deprived of the fuels they need to provide the human race’s main source of clean, efficient energy.”
The market for fusion fuels has leveled off, Westfall knew. The scientists don’t want to face the fact that their budgets will have to level off, as well.
Now the scene before her eyes was from a camera mounted on one of the scoopships. She watched, suddenly fascinated, as the ship plunged toward those roiling, racing cloud tops.
“Wind speeds at the uppermost levels of the clouds routinely exceed five hundred kilometers per hour,” Archer was saying, without a trace of emotion. “The clouds are composed mainly of diatomic hydrogen molecules and helium atoms: The fusionable isotopes such as helium-three comprise only a small fraction of the total.”
The ship plunged into the clouds. Katherine watched, wide-eyed, as her view was enveloped in swirling multicolored mists.
“The colors, of course, are from minor constituents in the clouds: sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and such. The ships separate out those impurities in flight and carry back only the fusionable isotopes that are needed.”
Abruptly, they broke out of the clouds. Katherine could again see the research station rotating slowly, almost majestically, as the scoopship returned with its cargo of fusion fuels.
She thought that her tour was finished, but instead the scene shifted to show the insides of a laboratory with serious-looking men and women working at some elaborate network of glass tubing while Archer’s voice cheerfully began to explain what they were doing.
It seemed like hours, but at last the tour ended and Archer helped her remove the mask and earbud.
“That’s about it,” he said, smiling as he helped her to her feet. “You’ve seen just about our entire operation, in less than two hours.”
Katherine Westfall nodded as she stood up. She felt tired, almost exhausted, her legs stiff. But then she realized that Archer’s tour did not mention the studies of Jupiter itself, of the airborne life-forms in the giant planet’s atmosphere, nor the creatures living in the huge globe-encompassing ocean. He didn’t show me the station’s third wheel at all, she said to herself. What’s going on there? she wondered. What’s he trying to hide from me?
INTELLECTUAL COUSINS
As they left the virtual reality chamber, Katherine Westfall told Grant Archer, “It’s not necessary for you to escort me to my quarters.”
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, smiling gently at her. “It’s not every day that we have such a distinguished visitor.”
She realized with some surprise that Archer was nearly a dozen centimeters taller than she. He doesn’t look that big, she thought. He’s built very compactly.
“I hope you’ll have dinner this evening with my wife and me,” Archer was saying as they walked along the passageway. “She’s very anxious to meet you.”
“Of course,” said Westfall. Then, choosing her words with special care, she added, “And when do you show me the station’s third wheel?”
His smile actually brightened. “Ah! That’s where the team studying Jupiter itself is housed. Along with the dolphins and the engineering crew.”
“Dolphins?”
“It’s a holdover from Dr. Wo’s original work,” Archer said. “He had the idea that we could use dolphins to learn how to communicate with an alien species. He called them our intellectual cousins.”
“But dolphins are from Earth.”
“Yes, but they’re quite a bit different from us. Intelligent, no doubt, but they live in such a different environment that they might as well be from a different world.”
“Dolphins,” Westfall repeated.
Chuckling, Archer told her, “At one point, Dr. Wo had a gorilla here. Enhanced her intelligence with a brain implant. It used to be a regular hazing ritual for new scooters to be introduced to her.”
“Scoopers? The people who run the scoopships?”
“Scooters,” Archer replied, pronouncing the word with deliberate precision. “It’s a slang term for scientists.”
“You actually keep a gorilla here?” Westfall could see the points she could score with the IAA council when she told them Archer was spending money on a gorilla in the Jupiter station.
“Oh, Sheena’s long gone,” he said. “She lived happily in a preserve back in Africa. Died several years ago, of natural causes.”
Westfall felt disappointed. “But you still keep dolphins.”
