Leviathans of Jupiter

“Those giant whales in Jupiter’s ocean? I don’t see what they’ve got to do with Volvox.”

“Those giant whales,” Archer said, “are colonies of smaller units. It’s hard to believe, but they are actually like Volvox and the Portuguese man-of-war: creatures that are composed of specialized independent organisms, living together cooperatively. I believe it’s called symbiosis.”

It took Deirdre a moment to digest that idea. Archer was smiling at her. It makes him appear quite youthful, Deirdre thought, gray hair or no.

Mistaking her silence for disbelief, Archer said, “I’m not a biologist of any stripe, but I was hoping that you might use what you know of Volvox to help us understand the leviathans.”

Deirdre had to suppress a laugh. With a shake of her head, she replied, “A colony of fifty thousand Volvox algae might make a ball about half a millimeter in diameter. Those whales—”

“Leviathans,” Archer corrected.

“Those leviathans are kilometers across, aren’t they? The size of mountains?”

“And then some.”

“So where’s the connection?” Deirdre asked. “How can microscopic algae help you understand those enormous Jovian creatures?”

Archer’s face settled into a thoughtful pucker. “As I understand your little bugs—”

“Algae.”

“Algae,” he conceded, with a dip of his chin. “As I understand it, their colonies have some specialized cells: flagella for propulsion, eyespots that sense light, that sort of thing.”

“They have sexual cells, too,” said Deirdre.

“They do? I thought they reproduced by fissioning.”

“Also through sex. But alone. One colony can contain both sexes. They don’t have to find a partner.”

Archer rubbed at his beard. “We’ve seen the leviathans disassembling, coming apart into component units which then bud off new units. And then they all reunite to form two beasts where there’s been only one before.”

“You’ve observed that?”

Without answering, Archer picked up the remote control unit on the table beside his chair and pointed it at one of the wall screens.

“It’s very rare,” he said. “We’ve been studying the leviathans for more than twenty years and we’ve only seen this once. Of course, we can’t get down into that ocean and watch them continuously…”

The screen showed a murky expanse. Deirdre could barely make out several shadowy forms moving through the gloom.

“Leviathans,” Archer said, in a voice that was little short of awestruck.

A tiny red line appeared at the bottom of the screen, no more than three millimeters long, Deirdre judged.

“That scale line represents a hundred meters,” Archer said. “A little longer than the length of an American football field.”

Deirdre blinked. “Then the animals must be…”

“On the order of ten kilometers long. Roughly the size of Manhattan Island.”

“Oh my!”

Archer smiled tightly. “Indeed.”

The picture suddenly cleared considerably. Deirdre could see the nearest animal in some detail now.

“Switched sensors to the sonar. We get better imagery with sound than we do with any frequency of light.”

“How deep are they?”

“This is about seven hundred kilometers below the surface.”

“Seven hundred…” Deirdre began to understand the awe in Archer’s voice.

“This was recorded by one of our submersibles. Unmanned, of course.”

Seven hundred kilometers deep, Deirdre thought. No human being could survive at that depth, not even in the best submersible anyone could build. But then she remembered that Max Yeager boasted of designing a sub that could carry a human crew down to the depths where the leviathans swam.

As if he could read her thoughts, Archer said, “We’ve just about completed a new submersible that will be crewed. Five people, maximum.”

“Dr. Yeager designed it,” Deirdre said.

“That’s right. He’s come out here to check out the final details of the construction. He was on the ship coming in with you, wasn’t he?”

She nodded. On the screen, the massive leviathan seemed to be falling apart. As it swam through the dark sea it began to break up. Deirdre saw bits and pieces of the animal floating off independently. What looked like flippers slipped away first, then broad chunks of the beast’s hide and inner parts that she could not identify.

“Disassembling,” Archer said. “This is when they’re vulnerable to the sharks. Predators. They’re much smaller than the leviathans, but very fast. Big teeth.”

A trio of what had been fins floated closer. Suddenly they began to shudder; the shaking grew more and more violent.

“The waves they send through the water when they bud like that is what attracts the sharks,” Archer said.

They watched for more than an hour as the individual bits fissioned, dividing into two. And then began to unite again, to reassemble.

“Endosymbiosis,” Deirdre murmured.

She stared at the screen, fascinated, as the hundreds of separate units slowly linked together into two complete leviathans and finally swam off side by side into the murky distance. The screen went blank.

“That was a lucky one,” Archer said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “No sharks found them.”

“That’s how they reproduce,” Deirdre said.

“But how do they accomplish it?” Archer asked, staring intently at the empty screen. “How do they know when to dissociate? How do the separate units know how to get together to form a new animal? Do both of the new ones share the knowledge, the memories of the original?”

She shook her head. “I still don’t see how studying Volvox could help you. They’re so different.…”

With a smile that was almost shy, Archer admitted, “Well, now we come to my ulterior motive for picking you.”

“Your ulterior motive?” Deirdre asked.

“You have something of a reputation in Chrysalis II as a visual artist.”

She felt her jaw drop. “Visual artist? You mean those little murals I’ve painted?”

“And the digital imagery you’ve created,” Archer said. “I’ve seen those, too. You’re quite good.”

Confused, Deirdre asked, “You want me to decorate the station?”

“No, no.” Archer laughed. Hunching closer to her, he said, “You see, the leviathans apparently communicate in visual imagery. I thought a woman with your talents for visual imagery might be helpful to us.”

With that, Archer picked up the remote control again. The wall screens on both sides of the office suddenly were filled with images of the leviathans flashing colors at one another: cool green, bright yellow, intense red. It was like being in the dolphin tank again, Deirdre thought. They were surrounded by the immense leviathans, swimming placidly in Jupiter’s ocean, flashing colored lights back and forth.

“That’s how they communicate?” she heard herself ask as she stared at the screens.

Archer said, “It seems obvious. They’re not simply making displays. They’re communicating. Intelligent communications. The way we use speech, they use visual imagery.”

“And you want me to study their imagery and see if I can make any sense out of it,” she said, her eyes still fastened on the screens.

“That would be a good beginning,” Archer said. “We’ve recorded hundreds of hours’ worth of their