Leviathans of Jupiter

“Voice only,” she commanded the phone.

“Dee!” Yeager’s voice sounded urgently. “You awake?”

“I am now, Max.”

“C’mon, get dressed and meet me in the galley. We’ll grab some breakfast and then go down to the third wheel and inspect Faraday before Archer brings Westfall down there.”

“I can’t,” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I have to be at the clinic at eleven hundred hours,” she said.

“I’ll have you back before then, don’t worry.”

“Who’s Faraday?” Deirdre asked.

“Not who. What. My ship. The baby that’s going to take Andy down to the leviathans.”

“Why do you want me to—”

“I’ve gotta give her the once-over before Westfall sees her,” Yeager explained, “and I’d really like you to see her.”

“But I—”

“I want to show off!” Yeager’s voice sounded eager, excited. “You’re the prettiest lady on this merry-go- round so I thought it’d be fun to show off to you. Okay?”

Grinning at his explanation, Deirdre said, “Okay. I’ll meet you in the galley in half an hour.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Yeager said.

“Thirty,” said Deirdre firmly. “It takes time to look beautiful.”

* * *

“Why did you name it Faraday?” Deirdre asked as she and Yeager rode the elevator down the station’s central shaft toward the third wheel.

For a moment Yeager didn’t reply. Deirdre thought he looked almost embarrassed. The only sound in the slightly swaying elevator cab was the swish of its rush down the tube.

At last Yeager explained, “Well, he’s always been a kind of hero of mine. Michael Faraday. Son of a cobbler, back early in the nineteenth century. Made himself into one of the great scientists. An experimenter. A hands-on guy.”

Deirdre nodded, beginning to understand.

“He invented the electric power generator. Called it the dynamo. Edison and the whole electric utility industry was based on his little contraption. Even the earliest nuclear power plants still used the kind of generator he invented.”

“I can see why you admire him,” Deirdre said.

Yeager broke into a grin. “There’s a story about Faraday. He gave a big public lecture in London about his little dynamo and after it was over a lady from the audience came up and asked him…” Yeager broke into a wavering falsetto, “ ‘Mr. Faraday, your invention seems very interesting, but tell me, of what use is it?’ Faraday answered her, ‘Madam, of what use is a newborn baby?’ ”

Deirdre said, “I’ve heard that story. In school, one of the professors told that story as an example of what scientific research is all about.”

“You betcha,” Yeager said. “But there’s a different version of the story, one that I like better.”

The elevator stopped with a ping! and its doors slid open. They stepped out into a passageway much like the main passageway up in the top wheel. But this one looked new, raw, almost unused to Deirdre’s eyes. Its deck was uncarpeted and it smelled of fresh paint.

Yeager fished his pocketphone from his tunic, then pointed toward their right. “This way,” he said.

“What’s the other version of the story?” Deirdre asked as they started along the sloping passageway. The doors along the corridor were unmarked, and Deirdre got the impression that the rooms behind them were empty.

“Oh, the other version,” Yeager said. “Well, it’s the same setup: Faraday gives his lecture to the public, but afterward it’s a member of Parliament who comes up and asks him what good his little dynamo might be. And Faraday tells him, ‘I don’t know, sir. But someday you will put a tax upon it.’ ”

Yeager laughed loudly. Deirdre smiled at him.

He stopped at a double door that was marked CONTROL CENTER—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Are we authorized personnel?” Deirdre asked.

As he tapped on the door’s security pad Yeager said, “We are if I know the lock’s combination.”

“But I’m not—”

“You’re with me, kiddo.”

The door slid open and they stepped into what looked to Deirdre like a mission control chamber. A horseshoe of consoles ran around a central chair whose padded arms were studded with colored buttons. The walls were smart screens from floor to ceiling, all of them blank. Deirdre counted an even dozen consoles, their cushioned chairs all empty, their screens and dials all dead.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Yeager went to the central chair and settled himself in it. His fingers began playing along the buttons in the chair’s arms and, one by one, the consoles hummed to life. Deirdre stood to one side, half leaning against the chair’s padded back.

“Okay,” Yeager said, nodding as if satisfied with what he saw, “now watch the middle screen, right in front of us.”

The screen ran the entire length of the chamber’s front wall. It began to glow and then sharpened to show a curving metal surface with an airlock hatch in it. Closed.

“That’s Faraday,” Yeager said. “A slice of it, at least.”

“That’s the vessel that’s going to take people into the ocean?”

“Yep. That’s her. Him. Whatever.” Yeager was still pecking at the buttons on the control pads. The consoles’ screens were displaying graphs and images, the gauges were all alight.

“Ships are referred to as ‘she,’ ” Deirdre said, “no matter who they’re named after.”

“Because it costs so much to keep ’em in paint and powder,” Yeager wisecracked.

“That’s an old sexist cliche,” Deirdre said, with a disapproving click of her tongue.

But Yeager’s attention was totally focused on the vessel. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? This is the first time I’ve seen her. After all the drawings and plans and simulations, there she is. She’s gorgeous!”

“It looks big.”

Yeager grunted. “As big as this whole station, almost. So big we can’t attach it to the station, it’d throw the center of mass entirely out of whack and we’d start wobbling like a drunken sailor.”

“It’s not connected?”

“Co-orbits with the station. To get to it you have to get into a spacesuit and go EVA.”

“Goodness.”

Grinning tightly, Yeager said, “Goodness has nothing to do with it.” Looking up into her face, the engineer asked, “Want to go aboard her?”

RESEARCH VESSEL FARADAY

“Aboard your Faraday?” Deirdre asked. “I’ve never been in a spacesuit. I don’t know—”

“Not in actuality,” Yeager said, almost impatiently. “VR.”

“Virtual reality.”

“Yeah.” Pointing, “Take that console, the one on the end. You’ll find goggles and ear plugs in the top drawer. Should be feelie gloves in there, too.”

Deirdre sat at the humming console, wormed a plug into her ear, pulled on the fuzzy-looking tactile gloves, then slid the goggles over her eyes. The goggles made everything look slightly greenish.