Jupiter Project

their bright orange color. I could make out tiny whirlpools that churned up the edges of the bands.

“Is a storm brewing?” I said.

“No, we’re seeing the last gasp of one that peaked five days ago. Astrophysics said they didn’t think another would come along for a while yet. but that’s only a guess.”

“What’s the radiation level like during the storm?”

“High. Higher than they’ve ever seen before, Astrophysics says. Why, worried?”

“Yup. I’m too young to be broiled in an electron shower. Are the shielding fields on?” I looked at my control panel. Everything glowed green.

“Yes, they went on automatically when we left the Lab. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m a natural worrier,” I looked around at the superconducting bars that ring the Roadhog, though of course you can’t see the magnetic fields they produce. Those bars were all that kept Jupiter’s Van Allen belts from frying us alive.

Radiation is a subtle thing. You can’t see it or taste it, but those little electrons and protons can fry you in an hour. They are why the Lab wasn’t orbited in close to Jupiter.

Earth and Jupiter have one big thing in common: radiation belts. A man named Van Allen discovered them back in the early Space Age, around Earth. A little later Jupiter turned out to have them, too. Mars doesn’t, nor Venus, nor Mercury. Reason: no magnetic fields. Earth and Jupiter generate big magnetic fields around them, and those fields trap high-energy particles that the Sun throws out.

They’re called belts because that’s what they look like—big doughnuts around Jupiter and Earth, many planetary radii in diameter. The Lab had to be located out beyond the worst part of that doughnut or we’d be cooked with radiation. Even so, the Lab has water tanks that line the outside of the Can and stop incoming particles before they can reach the living quarters.

The Roadhog hasn’t got that mass. It’s a shuttle, engineered for speed and economy. So you don’t go out in it during radiation storms.

Extra mass might have stopped the pellet that killed Ishi. Maybe there was an argument for putting shielding around the shuttles. Magnetic fields don’t affect pieces of rock, because the rock is electrically neutral; only encasing a shuttle in heavy walls would make it really safe.

But I wasn’t planning on applying for an insurance policy, anyway. I stopped brooding about Ishi and turned to Jenny.

“What’s wrong with Satellite Fourteen, anyway?”

“Here.” she said, handing me a clipboard with a maze of circuit diagrams on it. “A problem for the student.”

I found the circuit component that was fouling up pretty fast. The tough part was the Faraday cup.

The cup on most satellites, including Fourteen, is a simple affair. It has an electrostatically-charged grid open to the space around the satellite. Any charged particle that wanders by can be attracted by the grid. When it is, it picks up some added velocity and overshoots the grid—goes right through it—and runs smack into a collector. The process builds up a voltage across a capacitor. Every so often a watch officer in Monitoring—somebody like me—will call for a count from the satellite. The capacitor will be discharged, the voltage measured, and a little arithmetic gives the number of particles (usually electrons) the cup captured.

Satellite Fourteen’s cup wasn’t working. I had my own idea why. I didn’t think they were well designed.

“Hey, look,” Jenny said. I looked down, through the Roadhog’s floor. A brownish whirlpool, thick with blotches of red, was churning in the clouds below.

“That one reminds me of the Red Spot,” I said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before. Odd color.”

“There are some funny things going on in that atmosphere. Old Jove is putting on a show for us.”

“I wonder why.”

“Come back in ten years. Maybe we’ll know then.”

The nice thing about having somebody along on a trip is the reassurance you get. It’s easy, out in space, to get swallowed up in the vastness of everything. Being able to talk to somebody brings things back into perspective.

So we chattered away. I’d never spent that much time alone with Jenny, and I found out a lot of things about her I didn’t know. What I saw, I liked.

That’s the way it went, for six hours. Yes, six. Jupiter is big. The Roadhog pushed steadily at our backs and took us upward, toward the north pole, so we could match orbits with Satellite Fourteen.

We spotted a tiny glimmering dot on our left while the Roadhog was making final adjustments with its maneuvering jets. It grew rapidly: a silvery ball sprouting antennas and small attitude jets. It was one of the older satellites, which probably explained why it failed.

Jenny stayed in the shuttle while I coasted across to the satellite. It was basketball-sized, its shiny skin pitted. I pulled out several shelves of circuitry, disconnected the Faraday cup and went back to Jenny.

We both looked over the parts and discussed what to do about them. That’s the advantage of sending out a human being, rather than relying on multiple backup systems—the space around Jupiter is unknown, and no engineer back on Earth can predict what will happen to his pet gadget after a few years of pounding from high- energy electrons, dust and micrometeorites. In jargonese they call it “failure to allow for contingencies.”

We made some repairs on the circuitry. Working in gloves is awkward and even slipping microchip decks snugly into place can be difficult. We both had modified our suits for the work. We had a big flap on the chest that pulled down, revealing a big adhesive patch. Pull the flap down, stick the securing tab on a knee, and there you have half a square meter of microhooks. They’ll hang onto anything until you give it a good tug. If you’ve ever chased a lost thermocouple over a cubic klick of space, because you let go of it for a nanosecond or two, you’d appreciate an adhesive patch. Some techs have them on their arms, legs, every place they can see and reach.

After the standard repairs, I looked at the cup. It was a mess. Intermittent shorts, crappy signal characteristics. I didn’t think much of the design, either. Looked like ancient history. “Maybe we should keep it as it is,” I suggested. “For a museum piece.” Under Jenny’s schoolmarm eye I took it out, worked the replacement in, checked connections, and then ran a few tests on the rest of the oversized silver basketball. Everything looked okay. I coasted back.

“Not bad,” Jenny said. “You only took fifty-three minutes.”

On the long arc back we ate some squeeze-soup and tried to relax. I was tired. There is a kind of tension that comes from carrying out delicate operations in zero-g. Your muscles do far more than is necessary, without your even knowing it. Only later do you feel the aches seep into your joints.

Satellite Fourteen was one of the three satellites that looped in close over the pole, to get readings where the magnetic fields are strongest. We got a good view of the Great White Oval, a mixmaster of colors inside a glaring white swirl. As we watched it Jenny and I started to talk. The grand dance of Jove went on beneath, so vivid and alive you felt as if you could reach out and touch it. Somebody had called it “the greatest found art object in the solar system,” back in the twentieth century. Dead right. God’s palette. And as we stared at the hypnotic technicolor swirl, Jenny and I began to talk, really talk. And what came out was a lot of the things I’d always thought but never said.

I told her about the way the whole social thing looks to me—and to a lot of boys growing up. We’re driven by a big urge—get laid! the hormones sing. But everybody says, no, you’re too young. You’ll get in trouble. You sort of expect your parents and The System to keep saying no—they always do; they’re cautious. So you discount that. But the girls say it, too. That’s because they’ve been sold a bill of goods, just like us. They have everybody wagging fingers at them, saying Watch out! Don’t give in. Don’t even think of giving in. You’re not ready for it, emotionally ready. And you could get pregnant. And they’re right, in a way. Girls pay the bigger price. Their whole growing-up process is filled with fears of things that might happen to them. Boys never have to worry about getting pregnant. Or raped. And suppose you’re a thirteen-year-old girl and you decide you’re going to have sex no matter what anybody says? If you do anything to prevent pregnancy, you’re in trouble. The doctor tells your parents and then they come down on you. And if you don’t see the doctor, then maybe you wind up having a baby or getting an abortion. Some choice, uh?

I could see all that. Girls had it hard. Maybe harder than we did. Or maybe the trouble was just different.