“No,” the gorilla said firmly. “Bad thing.”
Grant instinctively reached out and rubbed Sheena’s thickly boned head. “I won’t let anybody hurt you, Sheena. I just won’t let them.”
“Grant friend.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’m your friend. I won’t let them hurt you. Not ever.”
The gorilla seemed to think this over for a few moments. Then she asked, “Why you?”
“I’m your friend, Sheena,” Grant said again.
“Not me.”
Grant didn’t understand what she meant.
“Grant not me,” Sheena rasped.
“I’m Grant, yes. And you’re Sheena.”
“Grant not me.”
What is she trying to tell me? he wondered.
“Lane not me.”
It struck Grant like a thunderclap. She realizes that the humans are different from her!
“Fish not me,” Sheena added, pointing a long powerful arm toward the aquarium tanks.
“You’re …” Grant hesitated. How do I answer her? He took a deep breath, then said, “You are Sheena. Sheena is big. Sheena is strong.”
“No like me.”
“That’s right, Sheena, nobody else is like you. You’re the only gorilla within half a billion kilometers.”
“Why no like me?”
“I wish I could explain it to you, Sheena,” Grant said, his eyes misting. “I really wish I could.”
INTELLIGENCE
“It’s official,” Muzorawa said. “We go in thirty days.”
He had dropped into the fluid dynamics lab, he’d said, to check on Grant’s progress with the ocean-mapping work. Grant was glad to see him. Muzorawa had been spending almost all his time training for the deep mission, and Grant found he’d missed the Sudanese dynamicist’s strong, calm companionship.
“Thirty days,” he said.
Muzorawa nodded solemnly. “I don’t suppose I’ll see much of you between now and then. Wo is putting us in quarantine.”
“Quarantine?”
“For security, he says. None of the crew will be allowed to take meals in the cafeteria. They’re setting up one of the conference rooms to serve as a wardroom for us.”
“I won’t see you at all, then,” Grant said.
Muzorawa flashed his warm smile. “I’ll drop in on you now and then, but I won’t be able to work with you very much.”
“You’ll be busy, I know.”
“This mapping work you’ve done, it will be a big help. A very big help.”
“I hope so.”
Grant was sitting at a computer desk that the technicians had rigged with a holographic screen so that he could view the ocean currents in three dimensions. The imagery was in garish false colors, electric blues and fire- engine reds, to make it easier to visualize the swirling turbulent flows streaming through the ocean. Still, Grant found that he had to sit at precisely the right spot and hold his head at just the proper angle to get the three- dimensional effect.
From the seat beside him, Muzorawa asked, “So … do you have anything new to show me?”
“I think maybe.” Grant picked up the headset he’d left on the desktop and called for his latest graph. The holographic view winked out, replaced by a flat diagram of undulating curves sprinkled with a hail of red data points.
“Buckshot pattern,” Muzorawa muttered.
“Not exactly,” said Grant. Tracing one of the curves with an extended finger, he explained, “If you integrate all the data points by time, you get what looks like a periodicity.”
Muzorawa sat up straighten “Periodicity?”
“The thunderstorms carry energy from below into the upper atmosphere, right?”
Guardedly, Muzorawa conceded, “Right.”
Jabbing a finger at the screen, Grant said, “The thunderstorms come in cycles. Both their frequency and intensity shifts every few days. Earth days, that is.”
“How could they shift like that?”
Smiling now, Grant said, “I think it’s a tidal effect.”
“Tidal?”
“It seems to correlate with the positions of the four big moons. Look …” He pointed to the curves again. “When all four of them are on the same side of the planet, storm activity peaks—on that side of the planet.”
Muzorawa squinted at the screen for long, silent moments. At last he asked, “How reliable is this data?”
“Some of it goes back a quarter century,” Grant admitted. “I even have points from the earliest remote missions, before this station was built.”
“Tidal effects.” Muzorawa shook his head. “Hard to believe.”
“But there they are,” Grant insisted. “Small but definitely there.”
“How in the name of the Prophet could tidal effects influence the thunderstorms?”
With a small wave of one hand, Grant replied, “There might be electromagnetic forces involved as well as gravitic.”
“Electromagnetic?” Wide-eyed incredulity was plain on his normally somber face.
“Io’s flux tube,” Grant suggested, waving his hands. “The other Galilean moons cut Jupiter’s magnetic field lines, too, don’t they?”
Muzorawa settled back in his chair, deep in thought. Without thinking consciously about it, Grant punched up a real-time view of Jupiter on the big wallscreen above the desks. The planet loomed over them, huge and awesome, clouds racing and swirling, flashes of lightning flickering like fireflies along the terminator and into the night side of the planet’s immense bulk. Fireflies, Grant thought. More like hydrogen bombs; each lightning bolt released megatons of energy.
With growing enthusiasm, Muzorawa said, “This is very interesting, Grant. Extremely interesting. I’ll have to check the records as far back as we can go … all the way back to the
“I’ll check the records,” Grant said. “You have enough to do over the next few weeks.”
With a reluctant nod, Muzorawa agreed. Then he asked, “Have you seen any tidal effect in the Red Spot?”
Grant was surprised by the question. “You’re not planning to go into the Spot, are you?”
“God forbid!” Muzorawa raised both hands. “I only wondered if the Spot changes in any predictable way.”
“There’s just not enough data from inside the Spot,” Grant said. “I’ve got a scattering of data from more than five years ago, but even then the probes didn’t last long enough to send back much.”
“They stopped sending probes into the Spot when Wo took over the station,” Muzorawa explained. “He said it was a waste of time and effort.”
“He’s right. That’s an awfully powerful cyclone down there.”
“Yes, that’s true enough. Still…”
“You’re not going near the Spot, are you?” Grant asked again, staring at the view of the giant planet.
“No, of course not. We’ll be on the opposite side of the planet.”
