The Gentle Giants of Ganymede

'You #146;d be surprised,' Hunt told him. 'He can be quite a character once you get to know him. He #146;s just a bit stuffy at first, that #146;s all. . . . But you should see them. I #146;ll bring some prints over. One was bright blue with pink stripes down the sides #151;body like an overgrown pig. And it had a trunk!'

Mullen grimaced and covered his eyes.

'Man . . . The thought #146;s enough to put me off drink for keeps.' He turned his head and looked toward the serving counter. 'Where the hell #146;s Frank?' As if in answer to the question, Towers appeared behind him carrying a tray with four cups of coffee. He set the tray down, squeezed into a seat and proceeded to pass the drinks round.

'Two white with, a white without, and a black with. Okay?' He settled himself back and accepted a cigarette from Hunt. 'Cheers. The man over by the counter there says you #146;re leaving for a spell. That right?'

Hunt nodded. 'Only five days. I #146;m due for a bit of leave on J5. Flying up from Main the day after tomorrow.'

'On your own?' Mullen asked.

'No #151;there #146;ll be five or six of us. Danchekker #146;s coming too. Can #146;t say I #146;ll be sorry for a break, either.'

'I hope the weather holds out,' Towers said with playful sarcasm. 'It #146;d be too bad if you missed the holiday season. This place makes me wonder what the big attraction ever was at Miami Beach.'

'The ice comes with scotch there,' Carizan suggested.

A shadow fell across the table. They looked up to greet a burly figure sporting a heavy black beard and clad in a tartan shirt and blue jeans. It was Pete Cummings, a structures engineer who had come to Ganymede with the team that had included Hunt and Danchekker. He reversed a chair and perched himself astride it, directing his gaze at Carizan.

'How #146;d it go?' he inquired. Carizan pulled a face and shook his head.

'No dice. Bit of heat, bit of humming. . . otherwise nothing to shout about. Couldn #146;t get anything out of it.'

'Too bad.' Cummings made an appropriate display of sympathy. 'It couldn #146;t have been you guys that caused all the commotion then.'

'What commotion?'

'Didn #146;t you hear?' He looked surprised. 'There was a message beamed down from J5 a little while back. Apparently they picked up some funny waves coming up from the surface. . . seems that the center was somewhere around here. The commander #146;s been calling all around the base trying to find out who #146;s up to what, and what caused it. They #146;re all flappin #146; around in the tower up there like there #146;s a fox in the henhouse.'

'I bet that #146;s the call that came in just when we were leaving the lab,' Mullen said. 'Told you it could have been important.'

'Hell, there are times when a man needs coffee,' Carizan answered. 'Anyhow, it wasn #146;t us.' He turned to face Cummings. 'Sorry, Pete. Ask again some other time. We #146;ve just been drawing blanks today.'

'Well, the whole thing #146;s mighty queer,' Cummings declared, rubbing his beard. 'They #146;ve checked out just about everything else.'

Hunt was frowning to himself and drawing on his cigarette pensively. He blew out a cloud of smoke and looked up at Cummings.

'Any idea what time this was, Pete?' he asked. Cummings screwed up his face.

'Lemme see #151;aw, under an hour.' He turned and called across to a group of three men who were sitting at another table: 'Hey, Jed. What time did J5 pick up the spooky waves? Any idea?'

'Ten forty-seven local,' Jed called back.

'Ten forty-seven local,' Cummings repeated to the table.

An ominous silence descended abruptly on the group seated around Hunt.

'How about that, fellas?' Towers asked at last. The matter-of-fact tone did not conceal his amazement.

'It could be a coincidence,' Mullen murmured, not sounding convinced.

Hunt cast his eyes around the circle of faces and read the same thoughts on every one. They had all reached the same conclusion; after a few seconds, he voiced it for them.

'I don #146;t believe in coincidences,' he said.

Five hundred million miles away, in the radio and optical observatory complex on Lunar Farside, Professor Otto Schneider made his way to one of the computer graphics rooms in answer to a call from his assistant. She pointed out the unprecedented readings that had been reported by an instrument designed to measure cosmic gravitational radiation, especially that believed to emanate from the galactic center. These signals were quite positively identified, but had not come from anywhere near that direction. They originated from somewhere near Jupiter.

Another hour passed on Ganymede. Hunt and the engineers returned to the lab to reappraise the experiment in light of what Cummings had told them. They called the base commander, reported the situation, and agreed to prepare a more intensive test for the Ganymean device. Then, while Towers and Mullen reexamined the data collected earlier, Hunt and Carizan toured the base to beg, borrow or steal some seismic monitoring equipment to add to their instruments. Suitable detectors were finally located in one of the warehouses, where they were kept as spares for a seismic outstation about three miles from the base, and the team began planning the afternoon #146;s activities. By this time their excitement was mounting rapidly, but even more their curiosity; if, after all, the machine was an emitter of gravity pulses, what purpose did it serve?

One thousand five hundred million miles from Ganymede, not far from the mean orbit of Uranus, a communications subprocessor interrupted the operation of its supervisory computer. The computer activated a code-conversion routine and passed a top priority message on to the master-system monitor.

A transmission had been received from a standard Model 17 Mark 3B Distress Beacon.

Chapter Three

The surface transporter climbed smoothly above the eternal veil of methane-ammonia haze that cloaked Pithead Base and leveled out onto a southerly course. For nearly two hours it skimmed over an unchanging wilderness of a stormy sea sculptured in ice and half immersed in a sullen ocean of mist. Occasional outcrops of rock added texture to the scene, standing black against the ghostly radiance induced by the serene glow of Jupiter #146;s enormous rainbow disk. And then the cabin view screen showed a tight group of perhaps half a dozen silver spires jutting skywards from just over the horizon ahead #151;the huge thermonuclear Vega shuttles that stood guard over Ganymede Main Base.

After taking refreshments at Main, Hunt #146;s party joined other groups bound for J5 and boarded one of the Vegas. Soon afterward they were streaking into space and Ganymede rapidly became just a smooth, featureless snowball behind them. Ahead, a pinpoint of light steadily elongated and enlarged, and then resolved itself into the awe-inspiring, majestic, mile-and-a-quarter-long Jupiter Five Mission command ship, hanging alone in the void; Jupiter Four had departed the week before, bound for Callisto where it would take up permanent orbit. The computers and docking radars guided the Vega gently to rest inside the cavernous forward docking bay, and within minutes the arrivals were walking into the immense city of metal.

Danchekker promptly disappeared to discuss with the J5 #146;s scientists the latest details of their studies of the terrestrial animal samples from Pithead. Without shame or conscience Hunt spent a glorious twenty-four hours totally relaxing, doing nothing. He enjoyed many rounds of drinks and endless yarns with Jupiter Five crew members he had become friendly with on the long voyage out from Earth, and found unbounded pleasure in the almost forgotten sense of freedom that came with simply sauntering unencumbered along the seemingly interminable expanses of the ship #146;s corridors and vast decks. He felt intoxicated with well-being #151;exuberant. Just being back on Jupiter Five again